For decades, Covington has been a preeminent antitrust advisor to the pharmaceutical industry, regularly providing US and EU antitrust advice to Rx and OTC pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology firms around the world in connection with mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, litigation, R&D collaborations, licensing transactions and other strategic transactions. The firm’s antitrust practice benefits generally from the extensive industry-specific experience of other Covington lawyers involved in other areas of practice, and no where is this more true than in respect of our pre-eminent life sciences regulatory lawyers. Ready access to such world-class lawyers allows our antitrust counsel to benefit from a highly-sophisticated and extensive understanding of the many scientific, marketing and regulatory forces at play in the life sciences area. Indeed, two of our life sciences colleagues have served as General Counsel of the Food & Drug Administration, and another former partner left to become General Counsel of PhRMA.
Our 60+ strong antitrust group located in our six offices in the US and Europe has successfully represented numerous pharmaceutical clients – throughout the United States, Europe and Asia/Pacific – defending litigation, responding to informal and formal governmental investigations, practically resolving potential antitrust problems, helping to structure and efficiently clear transactions with antitrust authorities where necessary, and assisting in the negotiation of antitrust-viable patent, joint venture, licensing and R&D collaboration arrangements. Our offices in Brussels and London routinely handle a variety of complex competition law issues for our pharmaceutical clients, as well as affording them highly-efficient “one stop shopping” solutions for international acquisition, licensing or marketing agreements with a European or even global dimension. Covington’s pre-eminent FDA and life sciences practitioners provide an enormously valuable resource for clients of our pharmaceutical antitrust practice, as does our extensive experience and expertise in the Rx anti-fraud compliance area and defense of massive Rx product liability litigations.
The few representative matters identified below illustrate the overall depth, complexity and global breadth of our pharmaceutical and biotechnology antitrust practice.
Representative Matters
- Antitrust counsel to the National Pharmaceutical Council, Consumer Healthcare Products Association, and Pharmacogenetics Working Group (EU and US scientific representatives from 22 major pharmaceutical companies). More generally, the firm serves as general counsel or principal outside counsel to over 20 trade associations in the food and drug area and related fields, including PhRMA.
- Successful defense of Eli Lilly in FTC investigation of its acquisition of an exclusive license from Sepracor for a potential antidepressant compound, in nationwide class actions, and termination of its DOJ hard gelatin capsule consent decree, and successful representation of a leading biotechnology company in FTC investigations of patent dispute cross-licensing settlement agreements involving four competitors.
- Formation of RxHub, a ground-breaking electronic prescription and fulfillment joint venture of the three largest Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs), covering close to 200 million insured lives.
- AstraMerck’s Rx-to-OTC switch licensing agreement with Procter & Gamble Company for Propose, the world’s largest selling Rx drug product.
- Representation of two separate Rx clients in the FTC’s investigation of branded/generic agreements and generic competition.
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