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Antitrust Cases Involving Patents

Pharmaceutical companies frequently misuse patent laws in order to protect their exclusive rights to name-brand drugs and block lower-priced generics from entering the market. These tactics include pay-for-delay schemes in which pharmaceutical companies improperly enforce patents or pay off generic companies to prevent or delay them from entering the market.

Heim, Payne & Chorush has an active patent-related antitrust practice representing drug purchasers in class action and Multi District Litigation antitrust lawsuits brought under the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Representative Cases

In In re Lidoderm Antitrust Litigation, Case No. 3:14-MD-02521

(Pending before Judge Orrick in the Northern District of California)

HPC represented a class of direct purchasers of Lidoderm®. The antitrust case stemmed from litigation in which Teikoku and Endo sought to enforce several patents against generic drug manufacturer Watson Pharmaceuticals in order to delay market entry of Watson’s generic lidocaine patch. The Direct Purchasers alleged that Teikoku and Endo’s asserted patents were invalid, not infringed, and/or unenforceable.

Law360 recognized the Lidoderm Antitrust case as one of the biggest competition cases of 2017: https://www.law360.com/articles/939336/the-biggest-competition-cases-of-2017-so-far

The case was settled for a substantial fee in 2018.

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