Servier: a bitter pill for the Commission

For the magazine Markt & Mededinging (Market & Competition), Pepijn van Ginneken and Gaëlle Béquet wrote an annotation to a judgment of the General Court of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 12 December 2018 between Servier and the Commission (Case T-691/14). The case took place in the context of so-called pay-for-delay agreements whereby Servier, who had patents for a certain medicine, paid (indirectly) generic producers to enter the market at a later moment. In this way, Servier could keep the prices of its medicines high. The General Court came to the conclusion that the arrangements with most of the generics were contrary to the cartel prohibition. However, the Commission had not proved that Servier was abusing its dominant position through these agreements. Click here to read the annotation.