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
The European Commission (EC) has fined five pharmaceutical companies a total of EUR13.4 million for participating in a cartel concerning N-Butylbromide Scopolamine/Hyoscine (SNBB) – an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API)...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
On 14 July 2022, Advocate General (AG) Kokott delivered her much awaited (non-binding) Opinions in Cases C-176/19 P, Commission v Servier and Others and C-201/19 P, Servier and Others v Commission. ...more
On Wednesday, March 30, 2022, Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, released a redacted opinion dismissing the Federal Trade Commission’s follow-on antitrust suit regarding Endo...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 September 9, 2021, the Department of Health and Human Services ("HHS") released its widely anticipated "Comprehensive Plan for Addressing High Drug Prices." The HHS report supports far-reaching legislative and...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
In the much-anticipated Lundbeck case (i.a. C-591/16 P), the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) on 25th March 2021 confirmed the decision of the European Commission (“Commission”) to impose fines on Lundbeck and several...more
In recent years, there have been various antitrust investigations in the pharmaceutical sector resulting in decisions of the European Commission (EC) and the European Courts. In two recent rulings – “Lundbeck and...more
On 25 March 2021, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled for the second time on a “pay-for-delay” settlement. These are settlements of a patent dispute that involve payments or other value transfers from the originator...more
The Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) has confirmed that pay-for-delay agreements with generic manufacturers ready to enter the market violate EU antitrust rules. ...more
On 26 November 2020, the European Commission (Commission) issued a decision fining pharmaceutical companies Teva and Cephalon EUR60.5 million for infringing Article 101 TFEU by agreeing to delay the entry of a cheaper generic...more
In a recent decision in In Re Humira (Adalimumab) Antitrust Litigation, No. 19-cv-1873, Judge Shah of the Northern District of Illinois dismissed a consolidated class action complaint filed by U.S. purchasers of AbbVie Inc.’s...more
In her opinion issued on June 4, 2020, Advocate General (AG) Juliane Kokott recommended that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) dismiss in its entirety the appeal by Lundbeck A/S and Lundbeck Ltd against the General Court’s...more
On February 3, 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a joint statement announcing their plans to collaborate in promoting competitive biological product markets and...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 October 7, 2019, California became the first state to enact legislation—Assembly Bill 824 ("AB 824")—rendering certain pharmaceutical patent litigation settlement agreements presumptively anticompetitive. This alert...more
As Congress focuses on how to drive down drug prices, there is bipartisan support for prohibiting reverse payment agreements, also known as “pay-for-delay” arrangements. These arrangements involve a brand-name pharmaceutical...more
The EU General Court (“Court”) reduced the fines imposed on Servier SAS and its subsidiaries (“Servier”) from a total of €428 million to €315 million (see press release no. 194/18), thereby partially annulling a European...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
On July 23, 2018, Congressman John Sarbanes (D-Md.) introduced a bipartisan bill, the Biosimilars Competition Act of 2018, meant to curb “pay-for-delay” agreements entered into by biologic and biosimilar drug manufacturers....more
This past year has seen renewed challenges to reverse payment settlement agreements in the pharmaceutical industry. Since the Supreme Court’s Actavis decision in mid-2013, potentially anti-competitive agreements are...more
The European Commission (EC) and other national competition authorities (NCAs) have traditionally shied away from investigating allegations of excessive pricing and appearing as price regulators. Commissioner Vestager warned...more