Amphastar Pharmaceuticals Inc. v. Aventis Pharma SA

OPINION

O’SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge:

We must decide whether we have subject matter jurisdiction over a corporate qui tarn action 1 under the False Claims Act that accuses a competing company of committing fraud against the United States.

I

This saga began in the early 1990s, when Aventis Pharma S.A., (“Aventis”) a French pharmaceutical enterprise, 2 developed a plan to sell the drug enoxaparin in the United States under the brand name Lovenox. Enoxaparin is a heparin-based blood thinner that was patented in Europe in the 1980s as European Patent 40,144 (“EP144”). Eventually, European authorities…