The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies accused of violating antitrust laws by using reverse payments to delay entry of a generic version of a...more
On May 13—and more than ten years after Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, the leading U.S. Supreme Court case on reverse payment settlements—the Second Circuit for the first time weighed in on whether (and how) antitrust...more
In the ten years since the Supreme Court ruled in Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis that reverse payment settlements—or settlements where a patent holder pays an accused patent infringer cash or other consideration to end...more
For nearly a decade, the Supreme Court’s FTC v. Actavis decision has guided pharmaceutical litigators and advisors exploring the antitrust risks inherent in settling pharmaceutical patent lawsuits, especially when such...more
A new California law, Preserving Access to Affordable Drugs, AB-824 (the Act), which is aimed at curbing reverse-payment patent settlements, took effect on January 1. The Act codifies a presumption that any transfer of value...more
This alert, the title of which is adapted from a March 30, 2016 FTC Staff Attorney blog post, considers the FTC's first lawsuit challenging a so-called "no-AG" agreement. No-AG agreements are components of Hatch-Waxman...more
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed an antitrust complaint this week against Endo Pharmaceuticals and several generic companies, alleging that these companies entered into anticompetitive “reverse payment” settlements of...more
The FTC has recently weighed in again on the evolving interpretation of the Supreme Court’s 2013 opinion in FTC v. Actavis, 133 S. Ct. 2223 (2013). The agency submitted an amicus brief to the Third Circuit in the appeal of...more
Applying its previous rulings in related litigation and interpreting FTC v. Actavis, 570 U.S. 756 (2013), the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania was tasked with determining whether to preclude expert...more
Courts continue to evaluate the degree to which “reverse payments” are permitted post-Actavis. In the latest of these decisions, issued on February 22, 2016, the First Circuit held that non-cash payments may run afoul of the...more
On January 13, 2016, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC or the Commission) released an overview of the pharmaceutical patent settlements filed with the Commission in Fiscal Year 2014 (October 1, 2013 – September 30, 2014). The...more
Federal Circuit Interprets Statutory Requirements for Biosimilar Regulatory Pathway - Amgen Inc., v. Sandoz Inc., (Fed. Cir. July 21, 2015): In a case of first impression, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal...more
On September 22, Judge Ronnie Abrams of the Southern District of New York dismissed an antitrust lawsuit against Takeda Pharmaceuticals and three generic drug manufacturers based on settlements they had reached regarding a...more
Sandoz successfully (at least for now) has overcome conventional wisdom, the plain language of the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act (BPCIA) (or, at least those provisions regarding patent litigation) and Amgen...more
Addressing for the first time whether reverse settlement agreements involving non-cash consideration merit antitrust scrutiny, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed the district court, applying the...more
In the first decision by a federal appeals court interpreting the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in FTC v. Actavis, the Third Circuit recently held in King Drug Co. of Florence v. SmithKline Beecham Corp. that so-called...more
In Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, 576 U.S. ____ (2015), the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether to overturn Brulotte v. Thys, 379 U.S. 29 (1964), its 1964 decision holding that it was per se unlawful for a patent owner to...more
Recently, the Third Circuit issued the first federal appellate decision interpreting the Supreme Court's landmark decision in FTC v. Actavis, Inc.[1], potentially greatly expanding the scope of settling parties in reverse...more
Last week, in In re Cipro Cases I & II, Case No. S198616, the Supreme Court of California adopted the United States Supreme Court's application of the Rule of Reason to the antitrust analysis of so-called "reverse payment"...more
In In re Lipitor Antitrust Litigation, No. 12 Civ. 2389 (D.N.J.), U.S. District Judge Peter G. Sheridan has confirmed his prior ruling that under the Supreme Court’s decisions in Twombly, Iqbal, and FTC v. Actavis, Inc., 133...more
A little more than one year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis Inc. and affirmed that antitrust principles apply to reverse payment settlement agreements — those in which a brand-name drug...more
In one of the first tests of the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, Inc. addressing the antitrust treatment of pharmaceutical patent settlements, a recent jury on Dec. 5, 2014, returned a...more
After six weeks of trial and two days of deliberation, the jury has returned its verdict in favor of the defendants in In re: Nexium. This trial began as a challenge to the allegedly anticompetitive effects of the settlements...more
Over the last several years, several health insurers have brought antitrust claims against drug companies, contending that they were overcharged for drugs as a result of agreements reached by the drug companies in the...more
In This Issue: - INTRODUCTION - WHAT ARE REVERSE PAYMENT SETTLEMENT AGREEMENTS? ..The Basic Framework of Hatch-Waxman Litigation ..The Federal Trade Commission’s View of Reverse Payment Settlements and Its...more