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Aidan Synnott and Bill Michael Publish Article in Global Competition Policy
September 24, 2009 Full PDF
Litigation partner Aidan Synnott and associate Bill Michael's article, "Antitrust and Intellectual Property: Recent Developments in the Pharmaceuticals Sector," was published in the September 24 edition of GCP: The Online Magazine for Global Competition Policy. In an amicus brief filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division recently argued that so-called "reverse settlement" or "pay-for-delay" agreements between manufacturers of branded and generic pharmaceuticals are "presumptively unlawful" under the antitrust laws -- reversing a position that the DOJ had taken before other federal courts of appeals as well as the United States Supreme Court during the previous administration and aligning itself more closely with the policies of the Federal Trade Commission. The article examines this shift in policy at the DOJ in the context of recent antitrust caselaw, and posits that the practical effect of the DOJ's and FTC's stated commitment to heightened enforcement in the pharmaceutical sector may be limited by their ability to articulate theories of anticompetitive harm that the federal courts deem viable.