On June 30, pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences triumphed over consumers in a $3.6-billion class-action suit that claimed the company deliberately manipulated the market in order to profit off of its expensive HIV treatment drugs, Courthouse News Service reported.
A federal jury had to consider weeks of evidence regarding Gilead’s conduct and deal with Israeli generic drugmaker Teva. A group of customers brought more than a dozen claims of anticompetitive and anti-consumer practices, and accused Gilead of a “long-running scheme” to restrain competition for Tenofovir—part of the antiretroviral therapy treatment regimen used to treat HIV.
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen, a Barack Obama appointee, told jurors on June 26 that the case is, “in a sense, a patent case wrapped in an antitrust case,” and wanted them to follow instructions for handling patent cases as well as for antitrust cases before arriving at a verdict.
“The fact that this trial took place in San Francisco, a city deeply scarred by the AIDS epidemic, heightened the case’s emotional angle. Indeed, AIDS advocates regularly protested outside of Gilead’s San Francisco headquarters during the course of this litigation. Gilead’s victory sends a resounding message to the antitrust bar that pharmaceutical companies can win these cases,” the company stated.
—Andrew Davis