Overview

The General Court has issued its long awaited judgment in the AstraZeneca case, upholding the Commission's decision in respect of both the SPC abuse and the selective deregistration abuse.

At the time of the Commission's decision, these abuses were novel under EU competition law as there had been no previous cases finding an abuse of regulatory procedures. The ruling will therefore be seen as an important victory for the Commission, adding two new types of abuse to the non-exhaustive list of Article 102 TFEU (previously Article 82 EC). The Commission has since considered these issues in the context of the pharmaceutical sector inquiry and made it clear at the time of the final report that it would not hesitate to make full use of all its competition law powers to take action against companies who use patent filing, life cycle strategies and similar practices to create artificial barriers to entry. The Court's confirmation of the Commission's analysis in the AstraZeneca case is likely to be a further incentive for the Commission to bring more cases of this nature.

Click ‘View Briefing’ to read Herbert Smith’s analysis of the judgment