US: AbbVie owes US$488m in antitrust case

A US judge on Friday, June 29, found that Abbvie Inc used sham litigation to illegally prevent generic versions of testosterone gel AndroGel from getting to market and ordered the drugmaker and its partner to pay US$488 million, reported Reuters.

The ruling by US District Judge Harvey Bartle in Philadelphia came in an antitrust lawsuit filed in 2014 by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Abbvie and its partner Besins Healthcare.

“The FTC has established the actual market reality that defendants possessed monopoly power and illegally and willfully maintained that monopoly power through the filing of sham litigation,” Bartle wrote.

Chicago-based AbbVie did not respond to a request for comment, but it denied the allegations at trial. A lawyer for privately-held Besins had no immediate comment.

The FTC has long fought against so-called “pay for delay” settlements, in which a brand-name drugmaker pays a generic rival to delay releasing a cheaper version of its product in exchange for resolving patent lawsuits.

Full Content: Reuters

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