On March 11, 2025, Judge Christopher R. Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted a shipping company’s motion for summary judgment, dismissing an antitrust case brought by the only other company...more
In May, we discussed two antitrust lawsuits brought against JetBlue Airways Corporation (“JetBlue”) by the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) in the District of Massachusetts. One lawsuit is focused on JetBlue’s proposed...more
For years, antitrust commentators have warned of threats to innovation and competition posed by “thickets” of patents—the “dense web[s] of overlapping intellectual property rights that a company must hack its way through in...more
We wrote before about a decision by an Alabama federal district court to analyze claims in the Blue Cross Blue Shield multi-district litigation under a per se standard. ...more
A court’s decision regarding the proper standard of review in a Sherman Act Section 1 case—whether to analyze the defendant’s conduct as a per se antitrust violation or under the “rule of reason”—is highly significant. The...more
4/16/2018
/ Anti-Competitive ,
Antitrust Litigation ,
Antitrust Violations ,
Best Efforts Clauses ,
Blue Cross ,
Blue Shield ,
License Agreements ,
Multidistrict Litigation ,
Per Se Rule ,
Rule-of-Reason Analysis ,
Sherman Act ,
Single Entity Rule ,
Standard of Review
This blog has discussed some of the dynamics created by the Supreme Court’s Hanover Shoe and Illinois Brick decisions and state “repealer” laws that attempt to undo their effect. As it turns out, repealer states aren’t the...more
The incentive is high to identify a Sherman Act violation in your competitor’s conduct—three times higher, to be precise, than to bring a claim for an ordinary business tort or even a false advertising claim under the Lanham...more
In a recent decision denying the defendant’s motion to dismiss, Judge Mitchell Goldberg of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania allowed the manufacturer of a generic version of Suboxone to proceed upon an interesting theory...more
1/10/2017
/ Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) ,
Anti-Competitive ,
Antitrust Litigation ,
Class Action ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ,
Generic Drugs ,
Monopolization ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Prescription Drugs ,
Product Hopping ,
REMS ,
Sherman Act
It is not every day that antitrust plaintiff classes fail to win certification due to lack of numerosity under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a)(1). Yet this week, absence of numerosity was the reason a Third Circuit...more
A recent complaint charges PepsiCo Inc. with several antitrust violations, including price fixing and predatory pricing in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act, conspiracy and attempt to monopolize in violation of...more
Portions of a reverse payment suit against Endo Pharmaceuticals and others were recently dismissed by Judge William H. Orrick of the Northern District of California. The case was brought by plaintiffs who allege that a...more
7/24/2015
/ Antitrust Litigation ,
Assignments ,
Endo Pharmaceuticals ,
Generic Drugs ,
Indirect Purchasers ,
Patents ,
Pay-For-Delay ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Settlement Agreements ,
Standing ,
The Clayton Act ,
Wholesale
As we previously reported, the FTC sought a preliminary injunction to block a merger between Sysco and U.S. Foods pending the outcome of its administrative trial challenging the deal. Yesterday, Judge Amit Mehta of the...more
As reported previously, the first post-Actavis jury verdict in a “reverse payment” antitrust case handed a win to the defendants. Now, plaintiffs in In re: Nexium (Esomeprazole) Antitrust Litigation have moved for a new...more
1/9/2015
/ Antitrust Litigation ,
AstraZeneca ,
Generic Drugs ,
Nexium ,
Patents ,
Pay-For-Delay ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Pharmaceutical Patents ,
RanBaxy ,
Reverse Payment Settlement Agreements ,
Teva Pharmaceuticals
Our first post in this series was titled “What Is a Reverse Payment?” As the recent cases discussed in today’s post show, the courts are struggling with a fundamental component of that question: What, for that matter, is a...more