The EU General Court offers a mixed review of patent settlement agreements in the pharmaceutical sector (Servier)

On 12 December 2018, the General Court (“GC”) once again passed judgment on a number of patent settlement agreements in the pharmaceutical sector. It had already reviewed such agreements in September 2016 when it upheld the decision of the European Commission (the “Commission”) in the Lundbeck case and ruled for the first time that pharmaceutical “pay-for-delay” agreements breach EU competition rules (T-691/14, Servier and Others v. Commission, see VBB on Competition Law, Volume 2016, No. 9). In such agreements, an original pharmaceutical manufacturer pays generics producers to stay out of the market. Background The Commission imposed total fines of € 427.7 million on Servier and five