Supreme Court Issues Actavis Opinion

On June 17, 2013, the Supreme Court issued its opinion (available here) in FTC v. Actavis. The Court held that so-called “reverse payments” — i.e., payments from pharmaceutical manufacturers to generic drug manufacturers to keep the generic drug manufacturers’ products off of the market during the term of the pharmaceutical manufacturers’ patents — were not immune from antitrust attack. In other words, patent-related settlement agreements can sometimes violate the antitrust laws. The Court declined to find that reverse payment settlement agreements are presumptively unlawful.