One of the most pressing issues in patent and antitrust law involves agreements by which brand-name drug companies pay generic firms to delay entering the market. In FTC v. Actavis, the Supreme Court held that these settlements could violate the antitrust laws.In the wake of the decision,...

In the area of drug patent settlements, the Third Circuit's ruling in King Drug Co. of Florence v. Smithkline Beechham Corp. (Lamictal) is the most important federal decision since FTC v. Actavis. Since the Supreme Court's ruling, district courts have split on whether “payment” applies...

High drug prices are in the news. In some cases, such as AIDS-treating Daraprim and the life-saving EpiPen, the price increases dramatically. In other cases, which have received less attention, the price stays high longer than it should. Either way, anticompetitive behavior often lurks behind...

FTC v. Actavis was one of the most important antitrust cases of the modern era. In one fell swoop, the Supreme Court ensconced antitrust's role in analyzing settlements by which brand firms pay generics to delay entering the market. The Court underscored the harms presented by large and...

Consumers suffer from high drug prices, which stem in large part from pharmaceutical companies’ anticompetitive games. This essay discusses the crucial role antitrust enforcement agencies can play in addressing pay-for-delay settlements and product hopping and draws lessons from this...

Mergers in the pharmaceutical sector warrant special scrutiny not only because of concerns over affordability of medicines, but also because the institutional details of pharmaceutical markets complicate the economic analysis of merger effects. Standard anti-trust analysis of mergers, in...

A company collects more than 100 patents on a drug. It then aggressively asserts this “patent thicket” and enters into settlements with each of the competitors that could enter the market, paying them to delay their entry for years. The company admits that its strategy is to “make it more...