On September 23, 2014, John Pecman, the Commissioner of
Competition, delivered the keynote address at the George
Mason University Pharma Conference. The Commissioner spoke about
how the Competition Bureau (the Bureau) approaches the interface
between competition law and intellectual property (IP), and the
Bureau's enforcement work in Canada's pharmaceutical
industry, including its treatment of reverse-payment patent
settlements or pay-for-delay agreements under the Competition Act (the
Act).
The Commissioner's speech coincided with the Bureau's
release of a white paper entitled
Patent Litigation Settlement Agreements: A Canadian
Perspective. The white paper provides information
on Canada's pharmaceutical industry and regulatory regime,
identifies the provisions of the Act that may apply to
reverse-payment settlements, and explains the Bureau's
preliminary views on how the Act could apply to reverse-payment
settlements. Both the Commissioner's speech and the white
