EU court urged to view Servier's pay-for-delay deals as anti-competitive

Advocate General Juliane Kokott, an adviser to the Court of Justice of the European Union, has urged the court to find that a series of pay-for-delay deals agreed by French drugmaker Servier with generics companies, were anti-competitive.

The case relates to perindopril, a cardiovascular product brought to market in the late 1980s by Servier under the brand names Coversyl and Coversum, among others.

As its patent expired in various European Union countries over the course of the 2000s, Servier sought further legal protection of its compound through the European Patent Office (EPO).