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 Friday, August 25, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals For The District Of Columbia Circuit affirmed dismissal of an antitrust action brought by the Federal Trade Commission regarding Endo Pharmaceuticals’s grant of an...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 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
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
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
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
In the ongoing battles over the antitrust treatment of pharmaceutical patent settlements, the Federal Trade Commission and private industry have not agreed on much. But a recent FTC amicus brief appears to signal a high level...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
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
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
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
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
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