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FTC Asks Court to Reverse Payment Decision

On May 2, 2014, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit requesting that the court reverse the district court’s decision in Lamictal Direct Purchaser Antitrust Litigation, finding that a “no authorized generic” agreement between branded and generic drug makers does not qualify as a “payment,” and is therefore not an antitrust violation.  Such agreements arise in patent settlements when a branded drug maker agrees to not issue its own authorized-generic alternative when the generic company begins to compete.

The FTC has taken the position that the “no authorized generic” agreements are akin to reverse payment settlements.  In FTC v. Actavis, Inc., the Supreme Court clarified that reverse payment settlements can violate the antitrust laws and are to be reviewed under the rule of reason.  In a reverse payment settlement, the branded drug maker pays the generic drug maker to drop its patent claim and not sell the generic drug.

In the Lamictal case, the issue in question was what constituted a payment and therefore, what types of settlements are considered to be subject to antitrust scrutiny.  On one hand, the FTC holds the position that a “no authorized generic” agreement is valuable compensation to the generic drug maker in exchange for abandoning a patent challenge.  The FTC is concerned that unless “no authorized generic” agreements are subject to antitrust laws, drug makers will simply avoid Actavis by structuring patent settlements to exclude cash payments.

The district court, on the other hand, found that a “no authorized generic” agreement is not a cash or other payment that would make the settlement subject to antitrust scrutiny.  One of the primary concerns of classifying this type of agreement as a payment is that nearly all patent settlements include valuable compensation for a party, so almost every patent settlement would raise concerns that the agreement is anticompetitive.




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FTC Takes a Broad, “Generic” Approach to Actavis in Amicus Brief

by Daniel Powers

The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) battle against “reverse-payment” settlements continues.  In an amicus brief recently submitted in the case of In re Effexor XR Antitrust Litigation, the FTC advanced a broad interpretation of the Supreme Court’s decision in FTC v. Actavis that looks beyond the labels applied to agreements between brand pharmaceutical manufacturers and the specific type of consideration provided to induce delayed generic entry. The FTC also outlines a two-step inquiry it contends is the appropriate manner of analyzing the potential antitrust concerns raised by such agreements.

The FTC has long targeted “reverse payment” settlements. A reverse payment settlement restricts the generic pharmaceutical from entering the market until a future date (even if that date is before the patent at issue expires) and includes a transfer of value from the brand to the generic firm, typically in the form of payments arising from an ancillary agreement for services or products provided by the generic. The Supreme Court’s decision in Actavis, while rejecting the FTC’s view that “reverse payment” agreements were per se illegal, nevertheless held that such agreements were not immune from antitrust scrutiny.  The Court held that such agreements “can sometimes violate the antitrust laws,” and that the rule of reason is the legal standard that courts must apply when determining whether such a particular agreement violates the antitrust laws.

In the Effexor XR case, plaintiffs have challenged a patent settlement agreement between pharmaceutical manufacturers Wyeth and Teva Pharmaceuticals. They claim that Teva agreed to delay introduction of its generic version of Wyeth’s drug Effexor XR, and that Wyeth agreed not to market an authorized generic version of Effexor XR for a period of time. There was no cash payment between the defendants and for this reason they have argued that Actavis is not applicable.

The FTC’s brief rejects the view that Actavis is limited to cash payments only.  It contends that the defendants’ interpretation puts form over substance and would allow a ready means for manufacturers to circumvent the Actavis ruling. The FTC argues that Actavis instead reflects an approach focused on a two-part inquiry. Courts, the FTC says, must first examine whether the alleged payment (whatever form it takes) was something that the generic challenger could have obtained had it won the underlying patent infringement litigation. If not, then the courts must inquire whether the payment is a vehicle for the parties to share monopoly profits by avoiding competition.

Taking this “generic” approach to Actavis, the FTC contends that the absence of a cash payment is not determinative and that Wyeth’s commitment not to market an authorized generic version of Effexor XR “presents the same antitrust concern as the reverse payments the Supreme Court considered in Actavis.” It remains to be seen how the district court will rule, but the FTC’s amicus brief signals that the Commission will continue to scrutinize settlement agreements and will resist attempts to limit the application of Actavis narrowly to its facts.




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“Reverse Payment” Settlements Subject to Greater Antitrust Scrutiny: Implications of Supreme Court FTC v. Actavis Ruling

by Jeffrey W. Brennan

By rejecting the “scope of the patent” test and holding that reverse payment patent settlements “can sometimes violate the antitrust laws,” the Supreme Court of the United States subjects such settlements to greater antitrust scrutiny.  But, by establishing the rule of reason as the operative standard for adjudicating the cases, with the burden of proof on the plaintiff, the Supreme Court rejected the Federal Trade Commission’s position that reverse payment settlements are “presumptively anticompetitive” and that the burden should be on defendants to overcome the presumption at trial.  Companies considering reverse payment settlements should evaluate a number of practical factors that may determine their level of antitrust risk.

Read the full article here.




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