Perindopril: Pay-For-Delay But Not As You Know It

This week, the EU General Court partially overturned the EU Commission's decisions in Perindopril (Servier v Commission and Krka v Commission).

The judgment was handed down pretty much on the tenth anniversary of the original dawn raids in November 2008. The raids came as a follow-up from the European Commission's pharma sector enquiry and led to a number of infringement decisions that have also found their way up to the General Court and to the Court of Justice of the EU. The key theory which the EU Commission advanced in the cohort of these so-called 'pay-for-delay' cases is, very broadly, that EU competition law can intervene in patent settlement cases in certain circumstances (both under the rules on abuse of dominance and restrictive agreements). These circumstances are (again, very broadly) where (i) the settlement proposal restricts entry by an actual or potential generic competitor—the delay element, and (ii) where the originator company makes a value transfer