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18 September 2017Americas

FTC secures partial win against AbbVie

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has secured a partial victory in its competition case against life sciences company AbbVie.

In September 2014, the FTC filed a suit at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, accusing AbbVie and pharmaceutical company Besins Healthcare of engaging in “monopolistic conduct”.

The FTC said that AbbVie’s subsidiary Unimed and Besins had filed “sham” lawsuits against Teva and Perrigo to “unlawfully maintain and extend monopoly power”.

Teva and Perrigo had been accused of infringing a patent covering AndroGel (testosterone gel), a testosterone replacement therapy for men.

“The reason is obvious: these lawsuits forestalled the possibility of generic competition by triggering automatic 30-month stays on Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority to approve Teva’s and Perrigo’s products,” said the original claim.

Unimed and Besins own a narrow pharmaceutical patent relating to AndroGel, US patent number 6,503,894.

AndroGel’s penetrative enhancer is called isopropyl myristate—the enhancers are inactive ingredients that facilitate the delivery of a drug product’s active ingredient.

Teva and Perrigo designed around the ‘894 patent, developing generic versions of AndroGel that contained penetrative enhancers other than isopropyl myristate.

On Friday, September 15, District Judge Harvey Bartle held that the patent lawsuits against Teva and Perrigo were “without question objectively baseless”.

The FTC had requested partial summary judgment on the “objective baselessness element of the sham litigation prong of their illegal monopolisation claim”. Bartle granted summary judgment.

AbbVie had also sought summary judgment on the monopoly power prong of the FTC’s claim, but this was rejected by the court as there were genuine disputes of material fact.

A trial of the remaining issues will follow.

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24 February 2017   The Federal Trade Commission has found after a public comment period that Abbott Laboratories’ $25 billion acquisition of St. Jude Medical would probably be anti-competitive.
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2 July 2018   Pharmaceutical companies AbbVie and Besins Healthcare have been ordered to pay the US Federal Trade Commission $448 million for using “sham litigation” to block access to generic versions of a testosterone drug.
Americas
2 October 2020   A US appeals court has cancelled a $448 million antitrust bill for AbbVie, in a blow for the US Federal Trade Commission.

More on this story

Americas
24 February 2017   The Federal Trade Commission has found after a public comment period that Abbott Laboratories’ $25 billion acquisition of St. Jude Medical would probably be anti-competitive.
Americas
2 July 2018   Pharmaceutical companies AbbVie and Besins Healthcare have been ordered to pay the US Federal Trade Commission $448 million for using “sham litigation” to block access to generic versions of a testosterone drug.
Americas
2 October 2020   A US appeals court has cancelled a $448 million antitrust bill for AbbVie, in a blow for the US Federal Trade Commission.