Humira buyers appeal AbbVie ruling to Seventh Circuit
Buyers of AbbVie’s arthritis treatment Humira (adalimumab) have appealed against an Illinois judge’s decision to dismiss their class action antitrust suit to the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
On Tuesday, July 28, the buyers filed a one-sentence notice at the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, informing District Judge Manish Shah that they were appealing against his June ruling.
Last month, Shah dismissed the suit after finding that the plaintiffs’ antitrust claims failed.
“AbbVie has exploited advantages conferred on it through lawful practices and to the extent this has kept prices high for Humira, existing antitrust doctrine does not prohibit it,” said Shah.
In April last year, LSIPR reported that AbbVie was facing multiple antitrust class action suits which claimed that the company had illegally barred competition for Humira by creating an exclusionary “patent thicket”. These suits were subsequently combined.
The suits described the ‘patent thicket’ as an unlawful scheme where AbbVie secured more than 100 patents “designed solely to insulate Humira from any biosimilar competition in the US for years to come”.
And, according to the suits, AbbVie entered into illegal market division agreements with companies including Pfizer, Sandoz and Mylan, to delay biosimilar entry in the US until 2023.
In May last year, Boehringer Ingelheim became the last of eight biosimilar makers to resolve litigation over the arthritis treatment.
But, last month Shah rejected the claims, finding that the “complaint brings together a disparate set of aggressive but mostly protected actions to allege a scheme to harm competition and maintain high prices”.
He added: “The allegations—even when considered broadly and together for their potential to restrain trade—fall short of alleging the kind of competitive harm remedied by antitrust law.”
The Humira buyers subsequently filed their notice of appeal and yesterday, July 30, the appeal was docketed.
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