The Court of Justice of the European Union has clarified the criteria for establishing that an agreement to settle a dispute between a pharmaceutical patent holder and a generic company is contrary to EU competition law in a judgment delivered on Thursday 30 January (Case C-3071/8).
Holder of a patent on the active pharmaceutical ingredient of an antidepressant drug and secondary patents protecting certain processes for the manufacture of that ingredient, the GlaxoSmithKline group (GSK)...