The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has overturned the dismissal of two antitrust suits over “reverse settlements” in which patent holders sought to delay the sale of generic versions of blockbuster drugs.
Challenges to those deals, popularly called “pay for delay,” must meet the standard of “ordinary plausibility,” the panel said in an opinion applying the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, which ruled that payments from patent holders to infringers through reverse payment settlement agreements are subject to antitrust scrutiny.
