Managing Associate - Linklaters Paris | Antitrust & Foreign Investment (currently on secondment at Nestlé)
🚨 The European Commission has just accepted commitments offered by Viforpharma in what will be - once published - the first EU decision addressing anticompetitive disparagement (“dénigrement” in French). 😵💫 We understand that Vifor disseminated “potentially misleading information about the safety of Monofer” i.e. information “that is neither based on Monofer’s label nor derived from clinical trials specifically designed to compare” Vifor’s drug and Monofer, its closest competitor. It particularly targeted healthcare professionals. 🤝 Rather than imposing a financial penalty, the Commission decided to accept commitments offered by Vifor to address its concerns. The commitments are tailored to the specific practices at stake and aim at undoing the effects of the disparaging practices. 🙋♂️ What legal test applied by the European Commission and how does it compare to the test applied by the French Competition Authority (Autorité de la concurrence) in its long-standing decisional practice? We will have to wait for the final decision… and also the decision in the Teva Pharmaceuticals case which has a disparagement component.