Pharmaceuticals

Abuse of dominance, European Court of Justice, European Union, Market definition, Patent settlements, Pharmaceuticals

(Geradin Partners)/ /Leave a comment

On 27 June 2024, the EU Court of Justice (“CJEU”) issued its judgments in the Perindopril (Servier) case. The judgments follow a European Commission (“EC”) decision of 9 July 2014, and a series of General Court (“GC”) judgments of 12 December 2018 in relation to appeals against that EC decision. The case started with a…

Abuse of dominance, Bulgaria, Effects-based, Parallel imports, Pharmaceuticals, Regulation

(Eversheds Sutherland, Bulgaria)/ /Leave a comment

At the end of 2023, the Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (“CPC”) issued a key decision related to an abuse of dominance case in the pharmaceutical sector. The decision, which is expected to have a significant impact on the parallel export of pharmaceuticals, provides a clue to the CPC’s approach when parallel export concerns…

Abuse of dominance, European Commission, Patent settlements, Pharmaceuticals

(Allen & Overy)/ /Leave a comment

On 10 October 2022, the European Commission (EC) sent a Statement of Objections to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited and Teva Pharmaceuticals Europe BV (Teva). The EC has provisionally found that Teva abused its dominant position in the market for the treatment of multiple sclerosis by misusing patent procedures and engaging in a disparagement campaign. This is not…

Dutch clause, European Commission, European Court of Justice, Gun jumping, Innovation, International Law Talk, Merger control, Pharmaceuticals, Podcast

(University of Vienna, Austria)/ /Leave a comment

In the last edition of the International Law Talk Podcast, I had the pleasure to interview Jay Modrall on the Illumina/Grail saga. Jay talks us through the whole case with all its interesting aspects: external and internal dimensions, article 22 referrals, gun-jumping, phase II, court proceedings, substantive issues with competition innovation and much more. Listen…

Anticompetitive agreements, Antitrust, Collusion, Economics, European Commission, Guidelines, Horizontal, Joint Bidding, Pharmaceuticals, Price fixing, Restriction by object

(Szecskay Attorneys-at-Law, Hungary)/ /Leave a comment

The European Commission’s horizontal guidelines are an invaluable tool for practitioners in antitrust compliance work. The team at Unit A1 in DG COMP have done a great job at further developing the guidelines in the new draft that was published for stakeholder comments on 1 March 2022. Today, the EU & Competition team at Szecskay…

Pharmaceuticals, Türkiye

, , (ACTECON)/ /Leave a comment

With the recent decision given by the 13th Chamber of the Council of State on 24 May 2021,[1] the administrative fine given to the Turkish Pharmacists Association (“TPA”) by the Turkish Competition Authority (“TCA”) on the grounds that some of its decisions and practices violated Article 4 of Law No. 4054 on the Protection of…

Abuse of dominance, Excessive pricing, Netherlands, Pharmaceuticals

, (Bird & Bird)/ /Leave a comment

The Netherlands Authority for the Consumer and Markets’ (“ACM“) announced focus on drug price developments has finally come to a tangible enforcement result: a fine of almost EUR 20 million imposed on Leadiant, manufacturer of the orphan drug CDCA-Leadiant. This penalty decision follows the announcement by the ACM in 2018, repeated in2020 and 2021, that…

Dutch clause, European Union, Excessive pricing, Intellectual property (IP), International Law Talk, Merger control, Patent settlements, Pharmaceuticals, Podcast

(University of Vienna, Austria)/ /Leave a comment

We are happy to announce the new International Law Talk Podcast episode on EU competition law developments in the pharmaceutical sector. And this one is twice as good! Not only are we discussing both competition and IP issues, but I also interviewed two leading experts in the field: Michael Clancy and David Hull from Van…

European Court of Justice, Patent settlements, Pharmaceuticals, Restriction by object

, , , (White & Case) and (White & Case, Belgium)/ /Leave a comment

On 25 March 2021, the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) dismissed all the appeals against the European Commission’s decision to fine Lundbeck and several other companies for entering into anti-competitive patent settlement agreements.1 The judgments largely repeat the position taken by the ECJ in its January 2020 Paroxetine judgment (see our alert). They notably confirm…

Commitments, European Commission, European Union, Excessive pricing, Pharmaceuticals

(DLA Piper Belgium), (DLA Piper Romania), (DLA Piper Ireland), and (DLA Piper Denmark)/ /Leave a comment

What are commitments? The recent effort by the Commission to settle the Aspen case suggests that commitment decisions are the preferred route to settle complex excessive pricing cases at EU-level.  Previous commitment cases where high prices have been at issue include Rambus, Standard & Poor’s and Gazprom.  The EU rules allow the Commission to make…