The Federal Trade Commission’s amicus filing Monday in a Third Circuit pharmaceutical antitrust case shows where the commission has turned its efforts on fighting reverse-payment settlements after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in FTC v. Actavis, a commissioner said in outlining her thoughts on such settlements.
FTC Commissioner Maureen K. Ohlhausen, who was speaking at an antitrust seminar at Dechert on Tuesday, said she thought the Supreme Court got it right in Actavis when it rejected last year both the FTC’s position that reverse-payment settlements were unlawful and the position taken by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that such settlements didn’t require antitrust scrutiny. The justices found the appropriate middle ground, Ohlhausen said.
