Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Law

Patents V. Statutory Exclusivities In Biological Pharmaceuticals - Do We Really Need Both, Yaniv Heled Oct 2014

Patents V. Statutory Exclusivities In Biological Pharmaceuticals - Do We Really Need Both, Yaniv Heled

Yaniv Heled

Over the past decade or so, the United States has been the arena of a boisterous debate regarding the creation of a new regulatory framework for the approval of generic versions of biologics-based pharmaceutical products (also known as "biological products" and "biologics")--an important and increasingly growing class of drugs. The basic purpose of such a framework is to create a fast and less-costly route to FDA approval for biologics that would be similar or identical to already-approved biological products--typically ones that are sold on the market at monopoly rates--thereby allowing cheaper versions of such medicines to enter the market. One …


Actavis And Error Costs: A Reply To Critics, Aaron S. Edlin, C. Scott Hemphill, Herbert J. Hovenkamp, Carl Shapiro Oct 2014

Actavis And Error Costs: A Reply To Critics, Aaron S. Edlin, C. Scott Hemphill, Herbert J. Hovenkamp, Carl Shapiro

All Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s opinion in Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, Inc. provided fundamental guidance about how courts should handle antitrust challenges to reverse payment patent settlements. In our previous article, Activating Actavis, we identified and operationalized the essential features of the Court’s analysis. Our analysis has been challenged by four economists, who argue that our approach might condemn procompetitive settlements.

As we explain in this reply, such settlements are feasible, however, only under special circumstances. Moreover, even where feasible, the parties would not actually choose such a settlement in equilibrium. These considerations, and others discussed in the reply, serve to …


Pay-For-Delay Settlements In The Wake Of Actavis, Michael L. Fialkoff May 2014

Pay-For-Delay Settlements In The Wake Of Actavis, Michael L. Fialkoff

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

“Pay-for-delay” settlements, also known as reverse payments, arise when a generic manufacturer pursues FDA approval of a generic version of a brand-name drug. If a patent protects the brand-name drug, the generic manufacturer has the option of contesting the validity of the patent or arguing that its product does not infringe the patent covering the brand-name drug. If the generic manufacturer prevails on either of these claims, the FDA will approve its generic version for sale. Approval of a generic version of a brand-name drug reduces the profitability of the brand-name drug by forcing the brand-name manufacturer to price its …


Making Do In Making Drugs: Innovation Policy And Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, W. Nicholson Price Ii Jan 2014

Making Do In Making Drugs: Innovation Policy And Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Law Faculty Scholarship

Despite increasing recalls, contamination events, and shortages, drug companies continue to rely on outdated manufacturing plants and processes. Drug manufacturing’s inefficiency and lack of innovation stand in stark contrast to drug discovery, which is the focus of a calibrated innovation policy that combines patents and FDA regulation. Pharmaceutical manufacturing lags far behind the innovative techniques found in other industries due to high regulatory barriers and ineffective intellectual property incentives. Among other challenges, although manufacturers tend to rely on trade secrecy because of the difficulty in enforcing patents on manufacturing processes, trade secrecy provides limited incentives for innovation. To increase those …


The Influence Of The Andean Intellectual Property Regime On Access To Medicines In Latin America, Laurence R. Helfer, Karen J. Alter Jan 2014

The Influence Of The Andean Intellectual Property Regime On Access To Medicines In Latin America, Laurence R. Helfer, Karen J. Alter

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter is a contribution to "Balancing Wealth and Health: Global Administrative Law and the Battle over Intellectual Property and Access to Medicines in Latin America," Rochelle Dreyfuss & César Rodríguez-Garavito, eds. Part I of the chapter explains how the repeated interactions between the Andean Tribunal of Justice (ATJ) and domestic IP agencies in the Andean Community helped to build an effective IP rule of law and to solidify pro-consumer interpretations of regional patent and trademark rules. Part II documents how ATJ judges and agency officials enabled Andean governments to resist pressure from the United States and its pharmaceutical industry …


The Case For Flexible Intellectual Property Protections In The Trans-Pacific Partnership , Matthew E. Silverman Jan 2014

The Case For Flexible Intellectual Property Protections In The Trans-Pacific Partnership , Matthew E. Silverman

Journal of Law and Health

The United States and eleven other countries are currently in the end stages of negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—the largest free trade agreement (FTA) in U.S. history—which incorporates a range of trade topics, including the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPRs). Although the negotiations have been highly secretive, negotiating texts of the agreement leaked as recently as November 2013 have suggested that the United States is proposing IPR provisions, specifically relating to patent protection, that are stronger and less flexible than IPR provisions included within three of the four most recent U.S. FTAs. This paper addresses and analyzes …


Actavis, The Reverse Payment Fallacy, And The Continuing Need For Regulatory Solutions, Daniel A. Crane Jan 2014

Actavis, The Reverse Payment Fallacy, And The Continuing Need For Regulatory Solutions, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

The Actavis decision punted more than it decided. Although narrowing the range of possible outcomes by rejecting the legal rules at the extremes and opting for a rule of reason middle ground, the opinion failed to grapple with the most challenging issues of regulatory policy raised by pharmaceutical patent settlements. In particular, it failed to clearly delineate the social costs of permitting and disallowing patent settlements, avoided grappling with the crucial issues of patent validity and infringement, and erroneously focused on “reverse payments” as a distinctive antitrust problem when equally or more anticompetitive settlements can be crafted without reverse payments. …