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
The Background: In the Supreme Court's landmark 2013 decision in FTC v. Actavis, the Court determined that large payments by branded drugmakers to potential generic entrants to settle patent disputes could be anticompetitive....more
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) spent the better part of a decade attacking the practice of innovator drug companies settling ANDA litigation by providing payments to generic applicants challenging the validity of Orange...more
On December 3, 2020, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published its annual report on pharmaceutical patent settlements filed with the FTC under the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003...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 26, the Boston Patent Law Association will host a panel featuring Judge William Young to discuss the legal landscape following the Supreme Court’s 2014 opinion in Actavis v. FTC...more
In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered its decision in FTC v. Actavis, finding that although so-called reverse payment settlement agreements were not per se antitrust violations in cases brought against generic drug makers...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
Textile Copyright Cases Ripe for ADR - While normally focused on music and media matters, copyright lawyers in California have grown busy with something else: fabrics. Hundreds of textile copyright suits involving fabric...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
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
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
Plaintiff Files Third Amended Antitrust Claim Against Highmark - A long running antitrust dispute in Western Pennsylvania continued on October 1, when a Pennsylvania hotel (Cole’s Wexford Hotel) filed a third amended...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