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Several pending cases should provide further guidance on the contentious issue of ‘pay-for-delay’, where IP and competition laws collide. WIPR reports.
There has been a clear setback for the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in an area where the laws on IP and competition overlap.
In May this year, a judge dismissed the FTC’s claims that in return for a $112 million payment, Impax Laboratories had violated antitrust law by not marketing a generic version of Endo Pharmaceuticals’ pain-relief drug Opana ER (oxymorphone hydrochloride extended-release tablets) and abandoning a related patent challenge.
The case is a closely-watched example of the highly contentious issue of ‘pay-for-delay’, where branded drug companies locked in patent litigation with generic companies pay their rivals to keep them off the market. It was also the first reverse-payment trial since the US Supreme Court’s landmark 2013 decision in FTC v Actavis.
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competition law, antitrust, Federal Trade Commission, pay-for-delay, patent litigation, generic drug companies, branding, Impax, drug development, regulate
