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Michael Carrier

is Distinguished Professor at Rutgers Law School, where he specializes in antitrust and IP law. He is co-author of the leading IP/antitrust treatise, IP and Antitrust Law: An Analysis of Antitrust Principles Applied to Intellectual Property Law, the author of Innovation for the 21st Century: Harnessing the Power of Intellectual Property and Antitrust Law, and the editor of Critical Concepts in Intellectual Property Law: Competition. He has written more than 100 book chapters and articles in leading law reviews, has been quoted more than 1200 times in the media, and has been cited in courts including the U.S. Supreme Court. Professor Carrier has testified before the FDA, FTC, National Academies, and Senate Judiciary Committee (twice), and House Energy & Commerce Committee (twice); is a past chair of the Executive Committee of the Antitrust and Economic Regulation section of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS); and served on the 2016 ABA Antitrust Section’s Presidential Transition Task Force.

You can view his scholarly works via his SSRN Author Page.

Recent Articles by Michael Carrier

The Fifth Circuit Must Preserve the Patent-Antitrust Balance by Upholding Actavis

The pharmaceutical industry presents some of the most important and challenging issues lying at the intersection of the patent and antitrust laws. On the one hand, patents play a crucial role in the industry, which is unique in the cost and duration of reaching the market. But on the other, a complicated regulatory regime and the event of generic entry (which dramatically lowers price and which the brand firm has interest in delaying) opens the door for potentially anticompetitive behavior. One area where this tension has surfaced in recent years has involved the settlement of patent litigation. In 2013, in FTC v. Actavis, the Supreme Court held that agreements by which brand-name drug companies pay generics to settle patent litigation and delay entering the market could have “significant anticompetitive effects” and violate the antitrust laws.

FTC v. Actavis: Where We Stand After 5 Years

It has been five years since FTC v. Actavis. In that landmark ruling, the Supreme Court held that settlements by which brand-name drug companies pay generics to settle patent litigation and delay entering the market could have “significant anticompetitive effects” and violate the antitrust laws. What has happened in these five years? For starters, the number of “pay for delay” settlements (involving payment and delayed entry) has declined.