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
I. Introduction - No pharmaceutical antitrust decision has had more impact than the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, a decision which officially defined the term “reverse payment...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 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
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
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 November 7, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review an appeal from a Third Circuit decision finding that a settlement between GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Teva) involving the...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
On March 30 the US Federal Trade Commission filed suit in federal court alleging that settlements of patent litigation in the pharmaceutical industry in which a pioneer firm agrees not to market an "authorized generic"...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
Recently, the First Circuit became the second federal appellate court interpreting the Supreme Court's landmark decision in FTC v. Actavis, Inc. to hold that non-cash "reverse payments" between pioneer and generic...more
Direct and indirect purchasers of Nexium recently appealed District of Massachusetts Judge William Young’s denial of a request for a new trial in In re: Nexium to the First Circuit. As we previously reported, In re: Nexium...more
In January, the Federal Trade Commission issued a report on the terms of settlement agreements between branded and generic drug companies in ANDA litigation under the Hatch-Waxman Act, according to the provisions of the...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
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
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, Inc. triggered a flurry of judicial activity in relation to pharmaceutical patent settlements allegedly involving reverse payments from patent...more