The U.S. Pharmaceutical Reverse Payments Under Antitrust Mechanism And The References To China

Intellectual property is a double edged sword, which can stimulate innovation. Meanwhile it also may provide the breeding ground for the abuse of rights to restrict free competition. The pharmaceutical industry is highly dependent on intellectual property rights. If the patent drug companies abuse their patents, it will put off the healthy development of the pharmaceutical industry. And it will postpone the time when the public can buy cheap generic drugs, affecting the public health and the welfare. Reverse payment is a common behavior under pharmaceutical patent litigation in the United States. By reverse payment agreements, patent drug companies can well achieve their purpose to postpone the time when the public can buy cheap generic drugs, which can make patent drug companies gain a lot of monopoly profits. Recently, a large number of pharmaceutical patents will expiry in China. In order to maintain the huge monopoly profits, drug companies will delay generic drugs listed in various ways. The reverse payment is the most effective way to delay, so the reverse payment agreements will appear inevitably in our country. Different purpose, contents, and formats of the reverse payment agreements will lead to different results. American judiciary applies the principle of reasonableness, the per se rule, a quick review of the principles and rules on the scope of patent test to judge reverse payment under antitrust mechanism. This paper studies on the American judiciary to know how to apply antitrust principles and approaches about the reverse payments, and to analyze the latest jurisprudence, seeking the best ideas to solve this problem. Provide recommendations for improvement and to prevent the abuse of intellectual property rights within pharmaceutical patent system of China’s anti-monopoly legislation. This article is composed of introduction, text and conclusion, the main text is divided into three chapters.Chapter1analyzes the generated background of pharmaceutical reverse payments. It mainly analyzes from three angles. They are industry backgrounds, social backgrounds and legal backgrounds. Chapter2discusses the American judicial practice about the principles and methods of antitrust issues adapt to pharmaceutical reverse payments. It also researches on the U.S. Federal Supreme Court ruling of a drug patent antitrust case----FTC. V. Actavis, Inc. Case, which was sentenced on June17,2013. This case is on behalf of the latest and most in-depth discussion of the American legal profession. Chapter3analyzes the status situation of China’s pharmaceutical patent system, drawing on the experience of U.S. intellectual property and antitrust regulation, in order to provide suggestions for China to deal with reverse payment regulations.