Aggrenox Pay-for-Delay Lawsuit Against Boehringer, Teva Survives Dismissal Bid

A federal judge has given the go-ahead to a class action lawsuit alleging Boehringer Ingelheim and Teva conspired to put off generic competition to the antistroke drug Aggrenox.

Plaintiffs in the case, which include employee healthcare funds and Humana, allege that Boehringer paid off Teva’s Barr Laboratories subsidiary in an anticompetitive deal that forced consumers to pay inflated prices for the brand version far longer than they would have absent the arrangement.

The lawsuits stem from the drugmakers’ 2008 settlement allowing entry of generic Aggrenox (aspirin/extended-release dipyridamol) in July 2015 — before the challenged ’577 patent expires in January 2017.

The suits consolidated in this case started appearing in 2013, according to the Connecticut district court judge’s Monday ruling in In Re: Aggrenox Antitrust Litigation.

In separate dismissal bids, Boehringer and Teva had argued, among other things, that the lawsuits were brought outside the statute of limitations and that the purchasers didn’t sufficiently charge invalidity of the patent in question. While the judge ruled against most of the bids, he also dismissed many state law claims in the lawsuit — a move praised by Boehringer.

The German brandmaker vowed to fight the remaining claims.

Teva declined to comment. — Bryan Koenig