EU court adviser: Servier's pay-for-delay deals with rivals were anti-competitive

Europe's top court should back an EU antitrust decision which found that French drugmaker Servier's pay-for-delay deals with generic rivals were anti-competitive and for which it received a 331-million-euro ($331.6 million) fine, an adviser to the court said on Thursday.

Europe's top court should back an EU antitrust decision which found that French drugmaker Servier's pay-for-delay deals with generic rivals were anti-competitive and for which it received a 331-million-euro ($331.6 million) fine, an adviser to the court said on Thursday. The European Commission in its 2014 decision said Servier's deals with five generics rivals between 2005 and 2007 were aimed at protecting its best-selling blood pressure medicine perindopril from competition in the European Union.

"The Court of Justice should rule that all agreements concluded by the Servier group with generic pharmaceutical companies constituted restrictions of competition by object," Advocate General Juliane Kokott at the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union said. The cases are C-176/19 P Commission v Servier and Others and C-201/19 P Servier and Others v Commission.

($1 = 0.9981 euros)