By Kurt R. Karst – The Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC”) drumbeat of opposition to patent settlement agreements (or what opponents call “pay-for-delay” or “reverse payment” agreements) grew louder last week with the Commission’s submission of an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the …
By Kurt R. Karst – Last Friday, ISTA Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (“ISTA”) filed a Complaint and a Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order and a Preliminary Injunction in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking to vacate FDA’s May 11, 2011 approval of Coastal …
By Kurt R. Karst – Last week, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) announced that the Commission’s Bureau of Competition (“Bureau”) sent letters (here, here, and here) to Sanofi-Aventis U.S. LLC, Watson Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Synthon Holding B.V. notifying them that the Bureau believes the companies violated …
Recently, we were perusing FDA-TRACK (Transparency, Results, Accountability, Credibility, Knowledge-sharing), FDA’s “web-based tool for tracking progress on key activities throughout the agency and making the information available both internally and to external stakeholders and the public,” and the FDA-TRACK Health Care Reform Dashboard in particular, …
By Kurt R. Karst – On May 10th, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in FDA’s favor in a case filed last July by Graceway Pharmaceuticals, LLC (“Graceway”) stemming from the Agency’s January 2010 denial of a Graceway citizen petition and approval …
By Kurt R. Karst – While we were at the American Conference Institute’s conference on Paragraph IV Disputes last week, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) announced the publication of its annual summary of agreements filed with the Commission during Fiscal Year 2010 – “Agreements Filed with …
By Kurt R. Karst – An April 21st letter penned by David Balto, a Senior Fellow at American Progress who focuses on competition policy, intellectual property law and health care, and Michael Carrier, a professor at the Rutgers University School of Law-Camden, and sent to five …
By Kurt R. Karst – A recent amendment to the America Invents Act (H.R. 1249) introduced by Representative John Conyers (D-MI) and passed by voice vote during a markup of the bill last week by the House Committee on the Judiciary would give The Medicines Company …
By Kurt R. Karst – On April 15th, Judge Ellen S. Huvelle of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted FDA’s Motion to Dismiss a Complaint filed last September by ViroPharma Incorporated (“ViroPharma”) in connection with the approval of ANDAs for generic versions …
By Kurt R. Karst – Since the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its December 2009 decision in Forest Group, Inc. v. Bon Tool Co. concerning the maximum $500 per violation penalty for intentionally falsely marking a product (in that case, spring-loaded parallelogram …
By Kurt R. Karst – FDA has responded to requests included in two reports accompanying the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2010 (Public Law No. 111-80) – House Report No. 111-279 and Senate Report 111-39 – requesting information …
By Kurt R. Karst – On occasion we dream about Hatch-Waxman and wake up in the morning with a burning question. One of the recent questions we wondered about is whether FDA would take the position that an ANDA sponsor who amends a long-pending ANDA to …
By Kurt R. Karst – Some court decisions just leave us scratching our heads after we read them, and the decision handed down last week by Judge Freda Wolfson of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey in Medeva Pharma Suisse A.G. v. …
By Kurt R. Karst – Last week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania issued a pair of decisions in a long-running dispute between Lannett Company, Inc. (“Lannett”), the self-proclaimed “oldest generic drug manufacturer” in the United States (founded in 1942), and Celgene …
By Kurt R. Karst – Although we were not in attendance at today's argument before the U.S. Supreme Court in PLIVA Inc. v. Mensing (09-993), Actavis v. Mensing (09-1039), and Actavis v. Demahy (09-1501) concerning whether certain Circuit Court decisions “abrogated the Hatch-Waxman Amendments by allowing …
