We represented Avast in a UK CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) in-depth Phase 2 investigation regarding Avast’s merger with NortonLifeLock. The merger combined two leading antivirus and consumer security providers, both globally and in the UK, and the CMA launched a Phase 2 investigation in light of the two companies’ respective UK market positions. The CMA had concerns because the merger resulted in a combination of two of the three largest antivirus suppliers, but the parties showed that smaller players exerted a sufficient competitive constraint, and that Microsoft would become a significant competitor. The CMA unconditionally cleared the transaction in Phase 2, an increasingly rare result to obtain before the CMA.

We won a unanimous US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit decision for biosimilar manufacturer Samsung Bioepis affirming the dismissal of all antitrust claims against it in a case involving the drug Humira®. The decision was the first to apply the US Supreme Court’s Actavis framework to biologics. In doing so, the court rejected the argument of plaintiffs, a purported class of indirect purchasers of Humira®, that parallel, multi-jurisdictional settlements of biologic/biosimilar patent litigation were illegal. Instead, the court held that the multiple early-entry settlements are legal “traditional” settlements that could not be characterized as “pay for delay.” The victory removed the threat of very significant damages and paved the way for further freedom in biologic-biosimilar patent licenses, which will lead to quicker introduction of lower-priced biosimilar alternatives in the market.

We secured for AbbVie Pharmaceuticals the dismissal of a “pay for delay” pharmaceutical antitrust class action, brought on behalf of putative classes of direct-purchaser and end-payor plaintiffs. The US District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed all federal antitrust claims and more than 100 state law claims concerning six patent settlements that purportedly delayed generic competition for hypertension medication Bystolic®.

We successfully represented Google at the EU General Court in obtaining an annulment of a portion of the European Commission’s 2018 Google Android decision. Google was originally fined €4.34 billion for abuses of dominance relating to the Android mobile operating system platform and general search services. The Court found that the Commission’s investigation suffered from procedural as well as substantive errors and reduced the fine for Google by €218 million, based on our arguments.