FTC Commissioner Rosch on Antitrust-IP in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol

David Balto has brought to my attention a speech that FTC Commissioner Tom Rosch made yesterday on IP-Antitrust issues specific to the pharmaceutical sector.  According to David, the speech highlights include:

• Rosch believes that both Tamoxifen and Schering were wrongly decided.
• Rosch hopes that the Supreme Court will accept cert in Tamoxifen
• The FTC supports the objectives of the proposed patent settlement legislation   
• Rosch believes that the FTC can successfully challenge patent settlements under the standards in the Tamoxifen and Schering decisions and the Commission should do so
• The speech addresses how competition should be analyzed in a merger where the parties suggest that there is no lost competition because the overlapping product of one of the merging parties violates the patent of the other merging party
• the speech addresses issues surrounding building a patent thicket 
• Finally, the speech suggests that FTC Section 5 can be used to attack the conduct of a patent troll

You can download the speech here.