Over the course of July and August, private practitioners and members of DG COMP alike leave Brussels for a few well-deserved weeks of holiday rest and recuperation. What reading material should the discerning competition specialist take to the beach this Summer? He/she could do worse than District Judge Cote’s Opinion in United States of America…
There have been two key recent developments in the U.S. relating to the legal dispute over patent settlements including so-called “reverse payments.” First, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review an Eleventh Circuit decision dismissing a case brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) challenging a patent settlement. Second, a district court in New…
My U.S. colleagues Lee van Voorhis and Brian Rafkin wrote an excellent client alert on the Bosch case and I asked them to prepare the following short summary for the Kluwer readership: On November 26, 2012, the FTC and Robert Bosch GmbH entered into a Consent Agreement that resolved the FTC’s inquiry into Bosch’s $1…
On 16 July 2012, a U.S. appeals court issued a decision holding that pharmaceutical patent settlements that restrict generic entry and contain a payment to the generic company are presumptively unlawful under the U.S. antitrust laws. The decision is a major victory for the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s view of pharmaceutical patent settlements with so-called…
The U.S. Supreme Court recently issued a decision that provides generic pharmaceutical manufacturers with the ability to challenge the “use codes” listed by brand name manufacturers in filings made with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”). The decision in Caraco v. Novo Nordisk illustrates the impact that these “use codes” can have on the…
The U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) has blocked two mergers in the past several months, in each case after filing a lawsuit against the merging parties. The first case involved a relatively small transaction in the digital tax business involving H&R Block and 2nd Story Software. The second case was the high-profile proposed acquisition by…
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has recently released two reports relating to the pharmaceutical industry. A significant theme in both reports is a concern that brand name pharmaceutical companies are using the threat of launching an authorized generic to make deals that delay generic entry. These reports shine a spotlight on the interplay between authorized…
Public discussion on merger control in the last few years of has put the spotlight on two elements of contemporary merger analysis: market definition and market concentration, of which the former has raised considerable debate, in particular. It has been asked if market definition has de facto become superfluous to merger analysis due to some…
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) has issued a report analyzing the U.S. patent system from a competition policy perspective. The FTC recognizes that, like the competitive process fostered by competition law, the right to exclude provided by the intellectual property laws is intended to promote innovation and thereby benefit consumers. The FTC believes, however,…
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is seeking to curb the use of so-called “most favored nation” (MFN) agreements — a common business practice that the DOJ believes can sometimes result in anticompetitive effects when entered into by a dominant firm. In October of last year, the DOJ commenced an action against Blue Cross Blue…
