On June 14, 2022, Chamber 1 of the National Court of Appeals in Federal Civil and Commercial Matters (case No. 7344/2020) confirmed a decision of the Secretary of Domestic Trade that had closed the file on a complaint for predatory practices brought by Tuteur S.A. against Millennium Pharmaceuticals and Janssen Cilag Farmacéutica S.A.
That judgment held that having filed a court action to enforce a patent during its term did not constitute per se an undue restraint of competition.
According to Tuteur, the contested conduct had consisted, on the one hand, of bringing legal action against it for alleged infringement of Argentine patent No. 254,608 (of which the defendants were respectively the owner and exclusive licensee) and, on the other, of falsely disseminating among Tuteur’s current and potential customers that the complainant’s medicinal product “BORATER” did not have a quality similar to the product “VELCADE” marketed by the defendants. In addition, Janssen, through its sales representatives, had allegedly circulated in the medical profession an article disparaging the generic “BORTENAT” of a third firm (Natco Pharma, of India), this brand being almost identical to Tuteur’s “BORATER”. This conduct infringed article 2, paragraph f), of the then current law No. 25,156 on the Defense of...
