Reconciling Competition and IP Law: the Case of Patented Pharmaceuticals and Dominance Abuse
- 09/03/2018
- Articles
On 8 March 2018, the “Autoriteit Consument en Markt” (“ACM”), the Dutch competition authority, issued a statement indicating that Chris Fonteijn, its soon-to-retire Chairman, has written what it qualifies as a “scientific publication” under the title “Reconciling competition and IP law: the case of patented pharmaceuticals and dominance abuse”. Mr. Fonteijn authored the article with two ACM colleagues, Ilan Akker and Wolf Sauter, as a contribution for an upcoming book on competition law and intellectual property.
The article comes on the heels of an announcement by ACM that the pharmaceutical sector will be at the heart of its competition enforcement priorities for 2018. The article points to “growing evidence that the enforcement of competition law in a patent context can both be justified and carried out in a manner that is compatible with IP law”.
The authors conclude their article with the view that if intellectual property rights are proven to be a contributing factor to excessive medicine prices, the regulatory framework that offers the incentives for such prices should be revised. This conclusion is no coincidence in the light of the European Commission’s ongoing efforts to gauge the impact on competition and prices of a range of allegedly pharmaceutical-friendly rules governing such matters as intellectual property, data exclusivity and orphan medicines.
Finally, it is noteworthy that, being of a scientific nature, the article contains the usual disclaimer that it was written in the authors’ personal capacity. Still, the article was published as an “ACM Working Paper”.
