By Kevin E. Noonan — In a crowded pharmaceutical art, the deficiencies thereof being so patent that the FDA encouraged industry to address and correct them, concerning a formulation developed to address the opioid crisis raging earlier in this century (see "Empire of Pain"), when is a resulting formulation obvious over that prior art and in view of the objective indicia of nonobviousness? This was the question facing the Federal Circuit in Adapt Pharma Operations Ltd. v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc., the panel majority affirming a District Court decision that the claimed invention was indeed obvious. The suit arose over…
