FTC v. Actavis, Inc.

FTC v. Actavis, Inc.
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 25, 2013 Decided June 17, 2013
Full case name	Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, Inc., et al.
Docket no.	12-416
Citations	570 U.S. 136 (more) 133 S. Ct. 2223; 185 L. Ed. 2d 175; 2013 U.S. LEXIS 4545; 106 U.S.P.Q.2d 1953
Argument	Oral argument
Opinion announcement	Opinion announcement
Case history
Prior	Injunction denied, In re Androgel Antitrust Lit., 687 F. Supp. 2d 1371 (N.D. Ga. 2010); affirmed, complaint dismissed, FTC v. Watson Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 677 F.3d 1298 (11th Cir. 2012); cert. granted, 568 U.S. 1066 (2012).
Holding
Reverse payment settlements of patent litigations are not immune from antitrust liability. Eleventh Circuit reversed and remanded.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan
Case opinions
Majority	Breyer, joined by Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan
Dissent	Roberts, joined by Scalia, Thomas
Alito took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
Sherman Act; Hatch-Waxman Act

FTC v. Actavis, Inc., 570 U.S. 136 (2013), was a United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court held that the FTC could make an antitrust challenge under the rule of reason against a so-called pay-for-delay agreement, also referred to as a reverse payment patent settlement. Such an agreement is one in which a drug patentee pays another company, ordinarily a generic drug manufacturer, to stay out of the market, thus avoiding generic competition and a challenge to patent validity. The FTC sought to establish a rule that such agreements were presumptively illegal, but the Court ruled only that the FTC could bring a case under more general antitrust principles permitting a defendant to assert justifications for its actions under the rule of reason.^[1]