Pharmaceutical company Merck is immune from claims that it violated antitrust laws by allegedly misleading the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the efficacy of its mumps vaccine, a federal appeals court has ruled.
Antitrust law bars monopolizing, attempting to monopolize, or conspiring to monopolize, and evidence in the case shows Merck “sought to extend its apparent monopoly by artificially raising the bar that GSK had to clear to obtain FDA approval for its competing mumps vaccine,” U.S. Circuit Judge Tamika R. Montgomery-Reeves wrote on Oct. 7 for the majority of a split panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
