Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals

Experts at Navigant Economics assist clients in litigation and regulatory proceedings across the healthcare industry, including insurance, purchasing organizations and practices, medical devices and pharmaceuticals. We have been engaged in major litigation involving allegations of anticompetitive impact from activities of purchasing groups, such as GPOs. We have been retained by healthcare companies, including insurers, to analyze the competitive effect of their operating rules.

Navigant Economics has particular expertise in the unique economic, regulatory, and institutional framework in which pharmaceutical firms compete. We regularly consult and provide expert testimony in lawsuits involving pharmaceutical patent infringement, antitrust, and general commercial damages claims, as well as on issues of public policy.

We have analyzed potential lost profits and reasonable royalty damages in alleged patent infringement suits brought by brand pharmaceutical Plaintiffs. We have assisted in litigation over possible preliminary injunctions to prevent "at-risk" entry of a competitor to a patented pharmaceutical, including providing analysis addressing the potential for "irreparable harm." We increasingly are asked to analyze the degree to which patented products in suit have achieved "commercial success," and whether any such success represents objective evidence that the patented feature was not obvious.

Navigant Economics experts have conducted detailed analyses of the competitive impact of a wide variety of alleged anticompetitive practices in the pharmaceutical and other healthcare products industries, including exclusive and preferred contracting, bundling, loyalty rebates, predatory pricing, price discrimination and "reverse" generic patent settlements. We also have analyzed potential competitive impacts of proposed mergers and acquisitions involving pharmaceutical products.

In addition, our experts have estimated potential lost profits, overcharge, and value-diminution damages associated with antitrust claims and general commercial litigation, such as breach-of-contract/license suits, fraud allegations, shareholder lawsuits, etc. Several of these cases have been international arbitrations involving drugs that are or would have been sold in the European Union as well as elsewhere in the world.

In the public policy arena, Navigant Economics experts have analyzed, conferred with government agencies, and testified regarding such issues as the impact of "authorized generic" pharmaceuticals on competition and the "adequacy" of competition among upstream bulk suppliers of narcotic active pharmaceutical ingredients.