J&J Settles Remicade Antitrust Suit

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and Janssen Biotech have agreed to pay $25 million to settle a class action lawsuit alleging they violated antitrust laws in marketing their blockbuster drug anti-inflammatory drug Remicade (infliximab).

Remicade is a biologic that first received FDA approval in 1998 for Crohn’s disease but has since been approved for ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic arthritis and plaque psoriasis.

In the initial complaint, filed on behalf of the National Employees Health Plan in September 2017, J&J and Janssen Biotech allegedly used exclusive contracts with insurance companies to block competition for the drug, including against Pfizer’s Inflectra (infliximab-dyyb) drug, a biosimilar to Remicade. Because of these contracts, Remicade was the only infliximab drug covered by many health insurers, according to the complaint.

The complaint also alleged that J&J offered exclusionary rebates and bundling arrangements with insurance company payers, including by allegedly coercing insurers into accepting the exclusionary contract terms by denying rebates to insurers who declined J&J’s exclusivity terms.

An amended complaint, filed in February 2018, added plaintiffs Local 295 IBT Employer Group Welfare Fund and the Welfare Fund of Plumbers Local Union no. 200, and claimed that J&J and Janssen Biotech’s exclusionary scheme severely limited other companies’ drugs, including Merck and Samsung Bioepsis’ biosimilar Renflexis (infliximab-abda), from getting substantial shares of the drug market.

Under the terms of the settlement, J&J did not admit to any wrongdoing.