ICLE on the Bystolic Antitrust Case

Yahoo Finance – ICLE was cited in a press release about the amicus brief it filed jointly with the New Civil Liberties Alliance at the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the In Re Bystolic antitrust litigation. You can read full piece here.

In a major March victory, Judge Lewis J. Liman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed the In re Bystolic antitrust lawsuit, citing a powerful argument in NCLA’s district court amicus curiae brief joined by the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE). NCLA argued that an antitrust plaintiff seeking to prove that a patent owner has made a prohibited “large” payment to potential competitors must show it was a large net payment (the cash paid minus the value of services provided), not merely a large gross payment. Judge Liman cited the NCLA/ICLE amicus brief in his opinion.

Now, NCLA and ICLE have partnered again in the case to file an amicus curiae brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Congress has long mandated that courts should strive to maintain a balance between the sometimes-competing claims of patent law and antitrust law, which should not be used to shortchange the rights of patent holders. So, before Plaintiffs’ lawyers are permitted to get into court to challenge the legality of a patent-litigation settlement, the NCLA/ICLE brief argues that, at a minimum, they ought to bear the burden of demonstrating a “large” and “unjustified” net payment made for the purpose of restraining trade.