Court Rejects FTC Decision, Backs Schering

An appeals court sided with Schering-Plough Corp., rejecting a finding by U.S. antitrust enforcers that the company illegally kept less expensive versions of the high blood pressure drug K-Dur off the market.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta on Tuesday rejected a 2003 Federal Trade Commission ruling that Schering-Plough’s settlements of patent suits with Upsher-Smith Laboratories Inc. and American Home Products, now Wyeth, amounted to payoffs to keep them out of the market.

Stephen Galpin, a spokesman for Kenilworth, N.J.-based Schering-Plough, said company executives “were gratified that the Court of Appeals saw the case as we did.”