FTC Gets $1.2 Billion From Drug Company Over 'Pay For Delay' Patent Scam

from the one-down dept

For many years now, we've been covering the pay for delay scam that many pharmaceutical companies have used to effectively pay generic drug makers not to compete with them, even though they are able to do so. The full details of how the scam works are complex, but involve abusing a ridiculous part of the Hatch Waxman Act that grants additional monopoly benefits to the first market entrant of a generic drug. The big pharma firms used that to their advantage, filing bogus lawsuits against those generic drug makers and then agreeing to "settle" the lawsuit they filed by paying the generic drug maker to not actually enter the market. The greater monopoly protection afforded to the big pharma company more than makes up for how much they have to pay the generic drug maker. In short, it's taking advantage of the stupidity of giving drug companies massive monopolies.

The FTC started looking into these practices years ago, and two years ago the Supreme Court ruled that the FTC had every right to go after drug makers using antitrust laws over these "deals." And the FTC has been filing lawsuits on an ongoing basis about these deals.

Teva has now settled one such case for a cool $1.2 billion -- giving you a sense of just how valuable it has been to these pharma companies to extend their monopoly, keep out competition and keep drug prices artificially high. With Teva, it was the sleep disorder drug provigil (and, technically, the drugmaker was Cephalon, which Teva then bought). Teva had been fighting with the FTC for years over this, and the case was scheduled to go to trial next week -- but the settlement ends that. The amount, $1.2 billion, by the way, is the largest ever settlement with the FTC. You have to imagine that there will be more of these coming considering the number of other lawsuits and the fact that "pay for delay" was a widespread practice in the pharma industry.

Of course, even with all of this abuse, some people still insist that giving monopoly rights to pharmaceutical companies is the best way to produce new medicines and to provide healthcare. Isn't it about time we began to question those assumptions?

Filed Under: ftc, generic drugs, hatch waxman act, patents, pay for delay, pharmaceuticals, provigil
Companies: cephalon, teva

California Supreme Court Shows How Pharma 'Pay For Delay' Can Violate Antitrust Laws

from the antitrust dept

For many years now, we've been talking about the problematic practice of "pay for delay" in the pharma industry. This involved patent holders paying generic pharmaceutical makers some amount of money to not enter the market in order to keep their own monopoly even longer. There's a complex process behind all of this, which often involves the larger pharmaceutical company first suing a generic maker, and then "settling" by agreeing to pay a sum of money to the generic maker. But, part of the "settlement" is that the generic drugmaker stays out of the market for longer than they otherwise would have needed to do so. Not surprisingly, the rise of such pay for delay, or "reverse payment" deals, came as a result of the Hatch-Waxman Act from 1984, which was supposed to encourage generic drugs to enter the market. But, because Congress does a really crappy job understanding game theory, those behind the bill failed to realize they were actually setting up incentives for the reverse (we'll get to how and why in a moment).

Either way, there have been a number of anti-trust lawsuits filed over these practices and finally, in 2013, in a case against Actavis, the Supreme Court ruled that these kinds of deals may violate antitrust laws, and the FTC had every right to use antitrust law against drugmakers. Late last year, the FTC finally put those powers to use (meanwhile, over in Europe, regulators have been going after the same practice).

And yet, even with the Supreme Court weighing in, all is not yet settled. Here in California, there was a separate case, revolving around pharma giant Bayer and the making of its super popular drug Cipro. There were a few different issues raised in this case, focusing mainly on whether California's state antitrust law could also be used against these deals (rather than just federal antitrust law) and also what "test" had to be used to determine if these deals violated the law (and, as part of that, whether you could presume that any such pay for delay deal must violate antitrust law).

The ruling itself [pdf] is a bit dense, but says that, yes, California's antitrust law does apply, and Bayer's efforts may violate antitrust law. But, in the process, it does a pretty good job laying out just how ridiculous the Hatch-Waxman Act was in terms of the incentives it actually set up, compared to the stated purpose of the bill:

The Hatch-Waxman Act illustrates the law of unintended consequences. Congress wrote into the act a substantial incentive for generics to enter markets earlier by offering a 180-day exclusivity period to the first generic filer, and only that filer, to challenge a patent.... The theory was that a generic would be more likely to challenge dubious patents if offered the carrot of an enormously valuable six-month period in which only it and the brand could produce a drug.... Otherwise, ―free rider‖ problems might arise: every generic would have an incentive to hold back and let some other generic be the one to shoulder the risk and litigation costs associated with challenging a patent.

In other words, somewhat incredibly, Hatch and Waxman basically decided the best way to encourage more non-monopoly-covered drugs on the market was... to grant them more monopolies. Ugh. What is it with politicians falsely assuming that everyone needs a government granted monopoly to do anything?

And, as with most government-granted monopolies, things don't quite go according to plan:

This solution may well have encouraged more generics to file patent challenges, but not without creating a series of new problems. In other settings, a patentee might have little incentive to buy off a challenger in order to preserve its monopoly and continue reaping monopoly profits, for the simple reason that paying off the first challenger would simply encourage another challenger, and then another, and then another.... Two features of the Hatch-Waxman Act change this dynamic. First, the 180-day exclusivity period created a bottleneck; no one else could receive FDA approval until after its expiration.... Second, other generics tempted to challenge a patent in the wake of a settlement with the first-filing generic would have to wait out an automatic 30-month stay the brand could obtain just by opposing their requests for FDA approval....

This legal regime means that, regardless of the degree of likely validity of a patent, the brand and first-filing generic have an incentive to effectively establish a cartel through a reverse payment settlement....

In other words, since Hatch-Waxman gives one generic company its own monopoly, the incentives are for the patent holder to figure out a way to pay off that company to not actually make use of that monopoly, thus allowing the original pharma company to keep its monopoly even longer.

Hey, how about we don't deal with the problems of government granted monopolies by piling more government granted monopolies on top of them? Just a thought...

And, because of all of these issues, it also can be used to block challenge to the validity of a pharma patent:

Rather than expend litigation costs on either side, the brand and generic can reach a settlement that reflects the likely validity or invalidity of the patent (stronger patent, smaller settlement; weaker patent, bigger settlement), grants the generic a share of monopoly profits, and leaves the brand the sole manufacturer of the product.

It is likely for this reason that reverse payment settlements, practically unheard of before the Hatch-Waxman Act, have proliferated in the years since its enactment.... This is probably not what Congress intended.

You think?

Either way, that question on the validity of the patent comes into play in the analysis of how antitrust law applies. After all, patents are technically an exception to antitrust law, since they're a government sanctioned monopoly. But what about an invalid patent?

Courts thus must reconcile the two bodies of law, making ―an adjustment between the lawful restraint on trade of the patent monopoly and the illegal restraint prohibited broadly by‖ antitrust law....

At the extremes, this is easy. If a patent were known to be invalid, a private agreement nevertheless giving it effect would be plainly illegal.... Conversely, if a patent were known to be valid, an agreement foreclosing competition no more than the statutory monopoly would not restrain trade beyond what federal law permitted, and the rights patent law affords the patentee would supersede any state law prohibition. Difficulties emerge when we move from a hypothetical patent known to be determinately valid or invalid to the real world, where validity may be unclear. When assessing the antitrust implications of an agreement arising from a patent, the truth about the patent‘s validity cannot always be known. The issue is how antitrust and patent law should accommodate each other under these conditions of uncertainty.

The ruling notes the importance of being able to regularly test the validity of patents to make sure bad patents don't stay in place, robbing the public domain (as well as the public of such benefits). Thankfully, the court recognizes that giving a government granted monopoly has tremendous costs, so they shouldn't just be given out willy-nilly:

Patents carry with them a frequent cost—monopoly premiums the public must bear.... The willingness to pay that cost depends upon a quid pro quo: ― " 'the public interest in granting patent monopolies‘ exists only to the extent that 'the public is given a novel and useful invention‘ in 'consideration for its grant.‘ " ... Accordingly, patent policy does not support unquestioned protection of every inventor‘s rights, but instead favors ―eliminating unwarranted patent grants so the public will not 'continually be required to pay tribute to would-be monopolists without need or justification.' " ... Vigorous testing for validity is thus desirable in order to weed out patents that shield a monopoly without offering corresponding public benefits.

And, in the end, the California Supreme Court notes that while it need not follow the lead of the federal Supreme Court in determining if patent law pre-empted antitrust law, the reasoning makes sense. As for which "test" to apply to see whether there is antitrust here, the Court notes that rather than hard-and-fast rules and buckets, the distinctions may be a bit more fuzzy than some assume. So rather than choosing one of the three big "rules" -- "rule of reason," "per se" or "quick look" -- the Court notes that there's more of a "sliding scale." Instead, it looks at the overall situation to determine if these practices violated antitrust law. The overall analysis is long and detailed, but the court recognizes that what's going on here and how these efforts can certainly harm the public, creating an "anticompetitive effect." It lays out a basic process for determining whether or not these agreements are anticompetitive, but rejects the idea that all such pay to delay deals must be anticompetitive (which would have been a nicer standard). Either way, this ruling certainly will make life more difficult for pharmaceutical companies looking to do pay to delay deals, meaning that it's good for the public and their health.

Filed Under: antitrust, california, cipro, generics, hatch waxman, hatch-waxman act, patents, pay for delay, reverse payments
Companies: bayer

FTC Finally Sues Pharma Companies Over 'Pay For Delay' Deals

from the and-what-about-all-those-overpayments? dept

For some time now, Techdirt has been following the "pay for delay" scandal, whereby a big pharma company buys off manufacturers of generics so that the former can continue to enjoy monopoly pricing long after its patents have expired. As we've reported, the authorities have finally started to clamp down on this abuse of the patent system. At the end of last year, two drug companies were fined by the European Commission, and now it looks like the FTC wants to follow suit, as the Wall Street Journal reports:

For the first time since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that so-called pay-to-delay deals may be subject to greater antitrust scrutiny, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit charging drug makers with violating anti-trust laws and hurting consumers in their collective pocketbooks.

Specifically, the agency charged several drug makers -- including AbbVie, Abbott Laboratories, which spun off AbbVie, and Teva Pharmaceuticals -- for striking deals that delayed the availability of the widely promoted AndroGel testosterone replacement therapy, a $1 billion seller.

The article includes some details on how the "pay for delay" deals worked:

In its lawsuit, the FTC charges that AbbVie, Abbott and Bevins Healthcare filed “sham” patent litigation against potential generic rivals, including Teva, and then entered into an allegedly illegal patent settlement in order to thwart competition.

Although it's great that the FTC is finally tackling this problem, it's regrettable that it had to wait so long for that ruling by the Supreme Court (pdf) to give it the legal basis for pursuing pharma companies:

The FTC had spent years trying to convince Congress and the courts that pay-to-delay deals hurt the economy. The agency, in fact, regularly released reports estimating the deals cost consumers dearly. In the last such report, which was issued in early 2013, the agency estimated the deals cost Americans $3.5 billion annually and contributed to the federal deficit.

The delay in bringing these cases doubtless means that the companies engaging in this behavior have made some serious profits as a result -- and that the public has been forced to pay billions of dollars unnecessarily.

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Filed Under: androgel, drugs, ftc, patents, pay for delay, pharmaceuticals
Companies: abbott laboratories, abbvie, bevins healthcare, teva, teva pharmaceuticals

Two Pharma Companies Fined Over 'Pay For Delay'; Novartis Unrepentant About Suffering Caused

from the profits-before-patients dept

Back in April of this year, we wrote about a spate of investigations around the world into "pay for delay" deals, whereby a big pharma company essentially buys off manufacturers of generics so that the former can continue to enjoy monopoly pricing long after its patents have expired. One of those involved the European Union, and the two pharma companies Johnson & Johnson and Novartis. As PharmaTimes reports, fines are being imposed on them for their actions:

The European Commission has fined Johnson & Johnson (J&J) just under 10.8 million euros and Novartis 5.49 million euros, after finding that their subsidiaries in the Netherlands had agreed an anticompetitive deal aimed at delaying the market entry there of a generic version of the painkiller Duragesic (fentanyl), thus breaching European Union (EU) antitrust rules.

Of course, such sums are little more than a wrist slap for pharma giants, but it's nonetheless good to see the European Commission making clear that this anti-competitive behavior is not acceptable in the EU:

The payment by J&J to Novartis "shockingly deprived patients in the Netherlands, including people suffering from cancer, from access to a cheaper version of this medicine," said Joaquin Almunia, the European Commission vice president in charge of competitive policy.

Despite that fact, with the likelihood that cancer patients were probably in more pain than was necessary, some remain in denial:

In a statement, Novartis and [its subsidiary] Sandoz say they "reject the Commission's allegation that the 2005 co-promotion agreement was intended to deprive patients in the Netherlands of cheaper medicines."

Whether or not that was the "intention", it was the inevitable effect, and quibbling over the difference shows the moral squalor of companies like Novartis that regard additional suffering of cancer patients as some kind collateral damage that can be ignored in the cause of pumping up their profits.

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Filed Under: european commission, fines, netherlands, pay for delay, pharmaceuticals
Companies: johnson and johnson, novartis

Supreme Court Says Patent Abuse Can Violate Antitrust Laws

from the a-good-step dept

We've been writing about the crazy world of pay for delay agreements by big pharmaceutical companies for years now. The short version of it is that big pharmaceutical companies pay off small generic pharma companies to prevent them from offering generic drugs. The actual process by which they do so is really convoluted, often involving the big company suing the small company first (yes, this is a case where the plaintiff is suing the defendant to get the defendant to accept money from the plaintiff). Courts have mostly said that this was a perfectly okay practice, while the FTC has been pushing back on it for years. The big pharma companies tried to argue that there was no antitrust issue, because (basically) its patents make any such drugs immune from antitrust laws (for those of you who still insist that patents are not monopolies, well, the claims by the patent-holding drug firms helps prove you wrong).

Thankfully, earlier this week, the Supreme Court ruled that the FTC can sue drug makers over pay-for-delay deals, allowing the FTC to argue that it violates antitrust law. The Court noted that just because you have patents, it doesn't mean it's a "get out of antitrust jail free" card:

For another thing, this Court’s precedents make clear that patent-related settlement agreements can sometimes violate the antitrust laws. In United States v. Singer Mfg. Co., 374 U. S. 174 (1963), for example, two sewing machine companies possessed competing patent claims; a third company sought a patent under circumstances where doing so might lead to the disclosure of information that would invalidate the other two firms’ patents. All three firms settled their patent-related disagreements while assigning the broadest claims to the firm best able to enforce the patent against yet other potential competitors. Id., at 190–192. The Court did not examine whether, on the assumption that all three patents were valid, patent law would have allowed the patents’ holders to do the same. Rather, emphasizing that the Sherman Act “imposes strict limitations on the concerted activities in which patent owners may lawfully engage,” id., at 197, it held that the agreements, although settling patent disputes, violated the antitrust laws. Id., at 195, 197. And that, in important part, was because “the public interest in granting patent monopolies” exists only to the extent that “the public is given a novel and useful invention” in “consideration for its grant.” Id., at 199 (White, J., concurring). See also United States v. New Wrinkle, Inc., 342 U. S. 371, 378 (1952) (applying antitrust scrutiny to patent settlement); Standard Oil Co. (Indiana) v. United States, 283 U. S. 163 (1931) (same).

Similarly, both within the settlement context and without, the Court has struck down overly restrictive patent licensing agreements—irrespective of whether those agreements produced supra-patent-permitted revenues. We concede that in United States v. General Elec. Co., 272 U. S. 476, 489 (1926), the Court permitted a single patentee to grant to a single licensee a license containing a minimum resale price requirement. But in Line Material, supra, at 308, 310–311, the Court held that the antitrust laws forbid a group of patentees, each owning one or more patents, to cross-license each other, and, in doing so, to insist that each licensee maintain retail prices set collectively by the patent holders. The Court was willing to presume that the single-patentee practice approved in General Electric was a “reasonable restraint” that “accords with the patent monopoly granted by the patent law,” 333 U. S., at 312, but declined to extend that conclusion to multiple-patentee agreements: “As the Sherman Act prohibits agreements to fix prices, any arrangement between patentees runs afoul of that prohibition and is outside the patent monopoly.” Ibid. In New Wrinkle, 342 U. S., at 378, the Court held roughly the same, this time in respect to a similar arrangement in settlement of a litigation between two patentees, each of which contended that its own patent gave it the exclusive right to control produc­ tion. That one or the other company (we may presume) was right about its patent did not lead the Court to confer antitrust immunity. Far from it, the agreement was found to violate the Sherman Act.

While this ruling basically just says the FTC can sue over antitrust, and doesn't rule directly on whether or not these kinds of agreements definitely do violate antitrust law, it's a good start -- and also opens up the very real possibility that the FTC (who has been expressing concern about patent trolls for some time) can now go after many different kinds of abuse of patents on antitrust grounds. While some had viewed this as a narrow case really just concerning these wacky pay-for-delay deals, it'll be much more interesting to see if the FTC now starts getting much more aggressive in using its antitrust powers against all kinds of patent shenanigans.

Filed Under: antitrust, patents, pay for delay, pharmaceuticals

'Pay For Delay' Drug Deals Under Scrutiny In US, EU And UK

from the bitter-medicine dept

The last time Techdirt wrote about "pay for delay" deals, whereby a big pharma company essentially buys off manufacturers of generics so that the former can continue to enjoy monopoly pricing long after its patents have expired, things didn't look too good. Back in 2010, the Second Circuit had refused to re-hear a case on the issue after dismissing a lawsuit arguing these deals were anti-competitive. But now things seem very different, and not just in the US.

There the Supreme Court will be examining the practise in the case of Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, Inc. As a long and helpful post on the SCOTUS Blog previewing this case explains:

The basic issue before the Court, for all of the complexity of the laws, can be stated simply: does a brand-name manufacturer, faced with a potential generic competitor, act illegally if it pays money -- sometimes a quite sizable sum -- to the generic in a deal that postpones for a period of years the substitute version's marketing. Popularly, this practice is known as "pay for delay." It also has been called a "reverse payment agreement." The FTC has been opposed to such deals for years under antitrust law, but until the Obama administration, the Justice Department did not share its opposition; it now does.

One analyst has suggested that the legality of such deals is "the most important unresolved problem in antitrust policy today."

The rest of the SCOTUS Blog post examines the background to this case, and the arguments made by both sides in their briefs to the court, in great detail. Here's an important point at the end of its analysis, about how the case relates to growing concern over the way the patent system is functioning:

If there is a notable weakness in the industry's side of this case, it is that this Court does have its doubts about the soundness of a patent system that may, perhaps too often, grant monopolies. The briefs of the brand-name company and its settlement partners among the generic makers depend very heavily upon the Justices having a keen desire to protect exclusionary efforts by patent holders, and that simply may not exist.

The pharma industry's problems are not restricted to the US. The European Commission is investigating the negative impact that similar "pay for delay" deals may have had on Dutch consumers:

The European Commission has informed the pharmaceutical companies Johnson & Johnson (J&J, of the USA) and Novartis (of Switzerland) of its objections regarding an agreement concluded between their respective Dutch subsidiaries on fentanyl, a strong pain-killer. The Commission takes the preliminary view that the agreement delayed the market entry of a cheaper generic medicine in the Netherlands, in breach of EU antitrust rules.

Specifically:

Janssen-Cilag, the J&J subsidiary supplying the pain-killer fentanyl in the Netherlands, concluded a so-called "co-promotion agreement" with its close generic competitor Sandoz, a Novartis subsidiary, in July 2005. At the time there were no regulatory barriers to develop and market generic versions of the fentanyl patches and therefore for Sandoz to enter the Dutch market. The agreement foresaw monthly payments from Janssen-Cilag to Sandoz for as long as no generic product was launched in the Dutch market. Consequently, Sandoz abstained from entering the market with generic fentanyl patches for the duration of the agreement from July 2005 until December 2006. This may have delayed the entry of a cheaper generic medicine for seventeen months and kept prices for fentanyl in the Netherlands artificially high.

And as if that weren't enough, the UK's Office of Fair Trading has launched its own investigation into the practice:

GlaxoSmithKline could face a multimillion-pound fine over allegations it paid other drug companies to slow down production of cheaper versions of its most profitable antidepressant, burdening taxpayers with inflated costs for NHS [National Health Service] medicines.

The Office of Fair Trading has launched an investigation into GSK, alleging it abused its market dominance by agreeing so-called "pay for delay" agreements between 2001 and 2004 to protect the position of its drug Seroxat.

The regulator claims Alpharma, Genetics UK and Norton Healthcare were paid by GSK to delay production of cheaper copycat versions of the drug which could have saved the NHS millions.

It looks like authorities around the world are finally waking up to the surprisingly cosy relationships between major pharmaceutical companies and some of their supposed rivals, the manufacturers of generic drugs. That's to be welcomed, since these "pay for delay" deals have allowed pharma companies to charge near-monopoly prices well beyond the expiry of their patents, at great cost to the public. As such, they offer yet another example of greedy corporations failing to keep the basic patent bargain with society.

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Filed Under: ftc, pay for delay, pharma

Court Reverses: Paying Competing Drug Companies Not To Compete Is An Antitrust Violation

from the good-for-them dept

A few years ago, we wrote about a ridiculous situation in which big pharmaceutical companies were keeping prices artificially high by paying other drug companies to delay entering the market with generic drugs. The really scary part about this was that the big pharma companies would abuse patent law to force smaller drug companies into these deals. They'd file a patent infringement lawsuit, where they knew they had no leg to stand on, but the infringement filing forces the smaller generic maker into negotiations, where they often agree to a "license" which includes the delay -- but the money flows in the opposite direction of a typical license. In other words, the whole lawsuit and the license is basically a sham to try to hide the agreement to prevent competition in the market. And, of course, as you probably know, when there's no generic competition, drug makers are able to charge absurdly high prices for their drugs. As soon as there's competition, the price often falls by more than 90%. Thus, the big drug companies have plenty of incentive to buy off the competition like this.

Many people have believed that such deals are clear antitrust violations -- and a lawsuit against big pharma Schering-Plough (owned by Merck) tested this theory, only to be dismissed by the district court. That original ruling really twisted logic in a few knots to come to its conclusion -- and the good news is that, two years later, the 3rd Circuit appeals court has reversed the ruling. The ruling is long, but interesting. It starts out by noting that other court's ruling on this matter seem to take the concept of "patent validity" way too far. As we've discussed in other contexts, patent validity says that you have to assume a patent is valid -- but in these cases, the court notes that this unfairly biases the situation in which the bogus patent infringement lawsuits are filed to extract these "pay-for-delay" deals.

First, we take issue with the scope of the patent test’s almost unrebuttable presumption of patent validity. This presumption assumes away the question being litigated in the underlying patent suit, enforcing a presumption that the patent holder would have prevailed. We can identify no significant support for such a policy. While persons challenging the validity of a patent in litigation bear the burden of defeating a presumption of validity, this presumption is intended merely as a procedural device and is not a substantive right of the patent holder.... Moreover, the effectively conclusive presumption that a patent holder is entitled to exclude competitors is particularly misguided with respect to agreements – like those here – where the underlying suit concerned patent infringement rather than patent validity: In infringement cases it is the patent holder who bears the burden of showing infringement.

The court then discusses the Hatch-Waxman Act, which is at the heart of these disputes, noting that its intent (to increase availability of generics) seems to be the exact opposite of what happens with these pay-for-delay deals. But where it gets interesting is that the court says that having one company pay another to delay market entrance should be seen "as prima facie evidence of an unreasonable restraint of trade." This is definitely a big ruling -- though its potential disagreement with other courts may get this issue over to the Supreme Court before too long.

It's nice to see the court get it right after the lower court seemed so confused by the issue.

Filed Under: antitrust, competition, drugs, generics, patents, pay for delay, pharma
Companies: merck, schering-plough

Court Won't Rehear Pay-For-Delay Patent Lawsuit; We Pay, They Delay

from the this-is-progress? dept

Among the many, many nasty things done in the name of patent law is the rather disgusting practices of "pay-for-delay", where a big pharma firm sues a generic pharma maker for patent infringement, with no legal basis, and part of the "settlement" that is then worked out is that the big pharma will pay off the generic pharma not to enter the market with a generic for a certain period of time. Basically, it's a (by definition and government support) monopoly player in the market paying off competitors to keep the market exclusive. It's difficult to see how that's not a blatant violation of anti-trust law. But, alas, apparently the Second Circuit doesn't see it that way. In April it tossed out a lawsuit over this issue, because the pharma companies involved put in a few worthless other things into the deal that acted as "cover" for the real anti-competitive move -- and, since the "monopoly" was from a patent, the court didn't see it as an anti-trust issue.

So, basically, even beyond the basics of patent law, non-infringing generics are being kept out of the market through what certainly seems like it should be blatant anti-trust practices. The generic pharma asked the entire Second Circuit to rehear the case, especially since the original three-judge panel had expressed some concerns over its own ruling, and even thought that the case might benefit from a full panel review. And yet... that's not going to happen. Joe Mullin points us to the news that the court has rejected the request for an en banc (full panel) rehearing of the case.

It did this despite the fact that the Justice Department, the American Medical Association and 34 state attorneys general all filed briefs in support of an en banc rehearing. And, then there's the FTC which is against these kinds of deals as well, and claims that they've cost consumers over $3.5 billion per year, and that number is rapidly growing each year. Of course, with all that firepower against such blatantly anti-competitive deals that make it more expensive to get important drugs, you'd think that perhaps a law change would be in order. No such luck. While the big health care reform bill that was passed earlier this year at one time had a provision outlawing such pay-for-delay scams, it got dropped from the bill along the way.

Filed Under: antitrust, patents, pay for delay, pharmaceuticals

Pay-For-Delay Ban Dropped From Health Care Reform

from the of-course dept

While plenty of folks are still digging through what the new health care reform (really medical insurance reform) law really means (and it's likely not what you hear most of the TV pundits talking about), it's unfortunate to hear that the provision to ban "pay for delay" schemes from pharma companies was removed. We talked about these sneaky deals last year. Basically, big pharma companies threaten (and often sue) the makers of generic drugs, just before a drug is about to go off patent. There is no actual patent infringement as the basis of the lawsuit, but the lawsuit acts as a negotiating ploy, with part of the "settlement" being an agreement from the generic drug maker not to enter the market. It's a blatantly anti-competitive move. Basically, the pharma companies leverage their gov't granted monopoly to build up a bunch of cash, which they can then use to pay off potential competitors in order to keep that monopoly for years past the expiration of the patent.

It makes drugs much more expensive for everyone while being a clearly anti-competitive practice. So it seemed like a good thing that the health care reform bill was supposed to ban it. Until... of course... it was removed days before the bill was approved. No matter what your take is on health care reform, it's hard to see any reason to allow this kind of practice to continue, and even if it wasn't included in the the health care reform bill, and isn't included in the current patent reform bill, it seems like there's no reason the FTC can't just step in and make the point that this is blatantly anti-competitive. The FTC knows this is a problem -- and has even said that these sorts of deals have cost US citizens $3.5 billion per year in higher drug costs.

Filed Under: drugs, health care reform, patents, pay for delay, pharmaceuticals

Pay-For-Delay Agreements Again Show How Pharma Abuses Patent Law To Harm Us All

from the this-helps-who-exactly? dept

We've discussed in the past how pharmaceutical patents actually tend to slow down the development of better healthcare solutions, and earlier this year, we mentioned how the EU was growing increasingly concerned about how patent holders were abusing their patents to try to prevent generic competitors from entering the market. Recently, US FTC officials have noticed the same thing and are trying to do something about it -- but are facing tremendous (well organized and well financed) pushback from pharmaceutical lobbyists (the kind who are able to get more than 40 Congressional reps, on both sides of the aisle, to repeat talking points into the Congressional record with no shame).

At issue is the fact that the big pharma firms are paying off generic drug makers to keep them from entering the market -- which in any other market would be a clear anti-competitive activity. How do patents fit into the equation? Well, the big pharma companies are suing the generics for patent infringement, but know they don't have any legal leg to stand on. The filing of the lawsuit is basically just a negotiating ploy, bringing the generic manufacturer to the table. If there were actual infringement, then the generic maker could be barred or would have to pay up. Instead, the money flows the other way. The two parties settle in a "pay for delay" pact, whereby the patent holder pays off the generic maker to stay out of the market, even if there's no real infringement. This basically grants the patent holder extra monopoly time on a drug, which can be worth billions, but makes drugs significantly more expensive for everyone.

Filed Under: generics, patents, pay for delay, pharma