The Ninth Circuit has rejected a monopoly leveraging claim against Abbot Labs. In that claim, plaintiffs alleged that Abbot violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by increasing the price of Norvir, an HIV booster drug on which it held a monopoly position, while leaving at competitive levels the price for Kaletra, a protease inhibitor that competes with other drugs. The Court held that the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in PacBell v. Inkline, holding that price squeezes cannot establish an independent antitrust claim where no duty to deal exists and the defendant did not price below cost, prohibited a finding of liability against Abbot which had no duty to deal and did not price Kaletra below cost. Significantly, the court also stated that the PacBell decision also cast doubt on the Circuit’s reasoning in Cascade Health, which had established a more permissive liability standard in bundled discount cases.
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