On February 2, the Federal Trade Commission announced that, together with the State of California, it had filed an antitrust complaint in federal court challenging settlement agreements between Solvay Pharmaceuticals and generic drug companies that had challenged Solvay’s patent on its testosterone-replacement drug, AndroGel. This new suit, FTC v. Watson Pharmaceuticals, continues efforts by the FTC and state attorneys general to attack settlements of patent litigation in the pharmaceutical industry – despite the FTC’s loss in the Eleventh Circuit in its case against Schering-Plough, its failure to obtain Supreme Court review of that decision, and case law in other circuits in private litigation rejecting the FTC’s analysis of settlement agreements with so-called "reverse payments" to the alleged infringer.
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