The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 23 decision in Sorrell v. IMS Health, Inc. is among the 2010 term’s most important. The opinion addresses a core marketing approach in the more than $300 billion U.S. pharmaceutical industry, exemplifies the court’s developing, muscular, corporate-speech jurisprudence, and provides a window into data privacy issues the court will face in upcoming terms.

‘Detailing’

The court struck down, 6-3, on First Amendment grounds a Vermont law forbidding the use of physicians’ prescribing histories for marketing purposes. The prescribing histories, which are stripped of patient-identifying information but do contain prescriber-identifying information, are collected from pharmacies and analyzed by data mining companies.

This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.

To view this content, please continue to their sites.

Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now

Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now

Why am I seeing this?

LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law are third party online distributors of the broad collection of current and archived versions of ALM's legal news publications. LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law customers are able to access and use ALM's content, including content from the National Law Journal, The American Lawyer, Legaltech News, The New York Law Journal, and Corporate Counsel, as well as other sources of legal information.

For questions call 1-877-256-2472 or contact us at [email protected]