In a pay-for-delay settlement, a brand-name drug company pays a generic
company that has challenged the brand-name company's patent to stay
out of the market. Some early antitrust challenges to these
settlements succeeded, but later court of appeals' rulings gave them a
green light. But, as we discussed in this post in July, the Third Circuit sought to apply the
brakes in In re: K-Dur Antitrust Litigation, which demanded serious antitrust scrutiny of those settlements. Earlier, we had posted (here, here, and here) about the FTC's efforts to police pay-for-delay settlements.
Now, as reported by the Washington Post, the FTC has asked the Supreme Court to review "a different case involving Solvay Pharmaceuticals, which paid
three generic drugmakers that agreed not to sell versions of its testosterone-replacement drug, called Androgel, until 2015." We'll keep you posted.
