Pharmaceutical Patent Wars, Reverse-Payment Settlements, and Their Anticompetitive Effects for Consumers

In Re K-Dur Antitrust Litigation: Pharmaceutical Reverse Payment Settlements Go beyond the Scope of the Patent

Anticompetitive Patent Injunctions

An economic assessment of patent settlements in the pharmaceutical industry.

This article demonstrates that in recent years, patent settlements between branded and generic manufacturers involving "reverse payments" from branded manufacturers to generic manufacturers have received close antitrust scrutiny, driven by concerns that such settlements harm consumers by delaying the entry of lower-priced generic drugs. The authors note that such settlements will be a focus of ...

Reanalyzing reverse payment settlements: a solution to the patentee's dilemma.

The Ftc Has a Dog in the Patent Monopoly Fight: Will Antitrust’s Bite Kill Generic Challenges?

Antitrust laws have been notoriously lenient in the patent realm, the underlying reason being that patents’ grant of exclusion create monopolies that defy antitrust laws in order to incentivize innovation. Thus, antitrust violations have rarely been found in the patent cases. But after the Supreme Court’s holding in FTC v. Actavis, brand name pharmaceutical companies may need to be more cautiou...