On April 5, 2024, the D.C. Circuit ruled that the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division could reopen an investigation of allegedly anticompetitive practices of the National Association of Realtors (“NAR”). See Nat’l Ass’n...more
In May, we discussed two antitrust lawsuits brought against JetBlue Airways Corporation (“JetBlue”) by the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) in the District of Massachusetts. One lawsuit is focused on JetBlue’s proposed...more
In a recently unsealed opinion, a court in the District of New Jersey has declined to certify a direct-purchaser class in In re Lamictal ("Lamictal") on numerosity grounds. It joins the growing number of courts in recent...more
A few weeks ago, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division announced the withdrawal of three long-standing policy statements related to antitrust enforcement in healthcare markets — Department of Justice and FTC Antitrust...more
Last month, we wrote a post on the patent “aggregation” suit Intel had filed against various entities affiliated with the investment firm Fortress. The post was timely; the next day, Judge Chen granted Fortress’s motion to...more
There have been several developments since we last wrote about Intel and Apple’s suit against Fortress and several of its so-called “patent assertion entities” (collectively, “Fortress”) based on the allegedly anticompetitive...more
The Supreme Court is the only avenue left for JELD-WEN Inc. after the Fourth Circuit denied the door manufacturer’s motion for rehearing en banc of a panel’s decision in Steves & Sons, Inc. v. JELD-WEN, Inc., 988 F.3d 690...more
Intel and Apple’s challenge to Fortress’s allegedly anticompetitive practice of patent “aggregation,” which we discussed previously on this blog, suffered another setback earlier this month. The Northern District of...more
For years, antitrust commentators have warned of threats to innovation and competition posed by “thickets” of patents—the “dense web[s] of overlapping intellectual property rights that a company must hack its way through in...more
With the Democratic primary process in full swing, we thought it fitting to take a look at where the candidates stand with respect to antitrust issues. As it turns out, this is a fairly active election cycle for antitrust,...more
We wrote before about a decision by an Alabama federal district court to analyze claims in the Blue Cross Blue Shield multi-district litigation under a per se standard. ...more
A court’s decision regarding the proper standard of review in a Sherman Act Section 1 case—whether to analyze the defendant’s conduct as a per se antitrust violation or under the “rule of reason”—is highly significant. The...more
4/16/2018
/ Anti-Competitive ,
Antitrust Litigation ,
Antitrust Violations ,
Best Efforts Clauses ,
Blue Cross ,
Blue Shield ,
License Agreements ,
Multidistrict Litigation ,
Per Se Rule ,
Rule-of-Reason Analysis ,
Sherman Act ,
Single Entity Rule ,
Standard of Review
This blog has discussed some of the dynamics created by the Supreme Court’s Hanover Shoe and Illinois Brick decisions and state “repealer” laws that attempt to undo their effect. As it turns out, repealer states aren’t the...more
We have previously discussed antitrust implications of pharmaceutical companies’ efforts to maximize patent protection for their drugs. Consumers and generic drug makers, for instance, have alleged antitrust violations based...more
10/19/2017
/ Allergan Inc ,
Anti-Competitive ,
Antitrust Provisions ,
Competition ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Inter Partes Review (IPR) Proceeding ,
Mylan Pharmaceuticals ,
Native American Issues ,
Patent Invalidity ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patents ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Sovereign Immunity ,
Tribal Governments ,
USPTO
As we noted last month, the FTC has recently been voicing concerns about potentially anticompetitive actions of state professional licensing boards. Our post also discussed the scope of such boards’ immunity from antitrust...more
Last month, the FTC staff sent a letter warning North Carolina’s General Assembly that a pending bill regarding the state’s real estate appraisal board could run afoul of competitive principles. The staff notes that it is...more
The incentive is high to identify a Sherman Act violation in your competitor’s conduct—three times higher, to be precise, than to bring a claim for an ordinary business tort or even a false advertising claim under the Lanham...more
In the past month, the DOJ and several state governments scored two trial wins in their challenges to mergers among some of the country’s largest health insurers. First, Judge Bates of the District of Columbia blocked the...more
In a recent decision denying the defendant’s motion to dismiss, Judge Mitchell Goldberg of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania allowed the manufacturer of a generic version of Suboxone to proceed upon an interesting theory...more
1/10/2017
/ Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) ,
Anti-Competitive ,
Antitrust Litigation ,
Class Action ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ,
Generic Drugs ,
Monopolization ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Prescription Drugs ,
Product Hopping ,
REMS ,
Sherman Act
It has been over three years since the Supreme Court’s Actavis decision. Since then, numerous putative class actions alleging harm to competition as a result of “reverse-payment” settlements have flooded the courts. The...more
11/10/2016
/ Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) ,
Actavis Inc. ,
Anti-Competitive ,
Antitrust Violations ,
Appeals ,
AstraZeneca ,
Class Action ,
Exclusivity ,
Generic Drugs ,
Hatch-Waxman ,
Nexium ,
Patents ,
Reverse Payment Settlement Agreements ,
Summary Judgment ,
Teva Pharmaceuticals
It is not every day that antitrust plaintiff classes fail to win certification due to lack of numerosity under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a)(1). Yet this week, absence of numerosity was the reason a Third Circuit...more
The European Commission on Tuesday announced its decision finding truck makers MAN, Volvo/Renault, Daimler, Iveco, and DAF liable for violating EU antitrust rules. The companies acknowledged that for 14 years they colluded...more
A recent complaint charges PepsiCo Inc. with several antitrust violations, including price fixing and predatory pricing in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act, conspiracy and attempt to monopolize in violation of...more
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is reportedly investigating the National Football League for antitrust violations in connection with its imposition of “price floors” on tickets for resale. In a 40-page report...more
Drug company Turing Pharmaceuticals made headlines recently when it reportedly raised the price of Daraprim, used commonly by AIDS patients to fight life-threatening infections, from $13.50 to $750 per tablet. Amidst...more
10/19/2015
/ Anti-Competitive ,
Attorney General ,
Duty to Deal ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Generic Drugs ,
Monopolization ,
Mylan Pharmaceuticals ,
Patent Litigation ,
Pharmaceutical Distribution ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Popular ,
Retailers ,
Reverse Payment Settlement Agreements ,
SCOTUS ,
Wholesale