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 June 30, 2023, a jury in the Northern District of California found Gilead and Teva not liable in a trial accusing the companies of engaging in an illegal reverse payment to delay generic versions of two HIV drugs, Truvada...more
In March 2021, our experienced intellectual property, antitrust, and health care litigation lawyers shared some predictions on antitrust policy and enforcement in the health care sector. In “Health Care Antitrust under...more
On 4 March 2021, the European Commission (Commission) opened a formal investigation into alleged anti-competitive conduct by the pharmaceutical company Teva. The Commission suspects Teva of having deployed a strategy with the...more
ANDA litigation, pursuant to the Hatch-Waxman Act, has become more complicated over the years since enactment of the statute in 1984, with more patents being asserted and more parties participating over the opportunity to...more
Last month, Judge Manish Shah of the United States District Court of the Northern District of Illinois dismissed an antitrust complaint brought by indirect purchasers of AbbVie’s blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis drug,...more
On 30 January 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued its decision on a request for preliminary ruling submitted by the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) in a case concerning the long-standing...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
On 12 December 2018, the General Court (“Court”) partially annulled the European Commission’s decision of 9 July 2014 in the Servier case and consequently reduced Servier’s fine by more than 30%, from €330.99 million to...more
Addressing questions of federal jurisdiction, the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that it, and not the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, had jurisdiction over two consolidated appeals arising from...more
Speculative Evidence of Irreparable Harm Sinks Bayer's Request for Permanent Injunction - Bayer Pharma AG, et al. v. Watson Laboratories, Inc. (D. Del. December 28, 2016) - Applying the eBay factors to Plaintiff...more
The Third Circuit recently vacated class certification, granted by the Eastern District of Pennsylvania after nearly a decade of litigation, in an antitrust case alleging that a pharmaceutical company entered into agreements...more
On August 8, the District of Connecticut issued a noteworthy ruling on how to approach defining the relevant market definition in a pay-for-delay suit. In In re Aggrenox Antitrust Litigation, 3:14-md-02516 (D. Conn.), three...more
Patent settlement agreements were traditionally deemed outside the purview of antitrust scrutiny unless the patent holder’s conduct fell outside the legitimate scope of the patent’s exclusionary power. This all changed when...more
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ordered AbbVie, Inc. and Besins Healthcare to produce unredacted documents to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), because the documents were relevant to the...more
Last week I posted on the European Commission’s (EC) latest report into patent settlement agreements between originator and generic companies in the European Union (EU). The EC says each time it produces these reports that...more
Nearly two years ago the Supreme Court issued its opinion in FTC v. Actavis, 133 S. Ct. 2223 (2013), holding that a reverse payment made by a brand manufacturer to a generic manufacturer to resolve pending patent litigation...more
As we reported earlier, the jury in In re: Nexium found that AstraZeneca had violated the antitrust laws by acting to keep generics off the market but that no generic would have been introduced earlier in the market even...more
As reported previously, the first post-Actavis jury verdict in a “reverse payment” antitrust case handed a win to the defendants. Now, plaintiffs in In re: Nexium (Esomeprazole) Antitrust Litigation have moved for a new...more
The Federal Trade Commission staff recently issued a report detailing the number of “potential pay-for-delay settlements” that took place in fiscal year 2013. The FTC is a staunch opponent of so-called “pay-for-delay”—also...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
Last week, the Nexium district court ruled on defendants’ motions seeking judgment as a matter of law. As we previously reported in several earlier posts, In re: Nexium is the first pay-for-delay case to go to trial since...more
India's competition authority, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), has begun scrutinizing and investigating pharmaceutical patent settlement agreements between brand and generic firms for potential anticompetitive...more
Given that strategic importance of IP-sensitive industries for the EU economy, the European Commission (Commission) has introduced a new initiative with a view to strengthen the protection of EU-based IP rights by working...more