Southern District of Ohio Judge Michael Watson dismissed an antitrust claim brought be direct purchasers of the drug Plavix against the patent holder and its generic competitor alleging that they anticompetitively kept generic Plavix from the market. The patent holder and generic competitor had reached a settlement agreement that was rejected by the FTC. The parties thus continued patent litigation while an injunction barred the introduction of generic Plavix. The court held that defendant’s patent rights and the injunction were responsible for any restraint on competition, not the parties’ agreements. The court also dismissed the plaintiffs’ Walker Process claim that the patent had been obtained by fraud on the ground that they lacked standing to assert such a claim.
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