Insights

Washington – June 26, 2023: Intellectual Asset Management recognized Crowell & Moring in its IAM Patent 1000 – The World’s Leading Patent Practitioners guide, awarding the firm a gold band ranking as one of the top four firms handling patent litigation and transactions in Belgium, and a silver ranking for the firm’s Chicago office. The firm was also recommended nationally in the United States for trade secrets litigation. This marks the tenth consecutive year that the firm has been ranked in the guide in Belgium.

Washington — January 12, 2022: Crowell & Moring has published Litigation Forecast 2022: What Corporate Counsel Need to Know for the Coming Year. The tenth-annual Litigation Forecast focuses on the intersection of technology, litigation, and intellectual property, including significant changes to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board process, the impact of Google v. Oracle on copyright, new developments in the biopharma space, shifting FTC enforcement strategies, and more. The Litigation Forecast provides forward-looking insights from leading Crowell & Moring lawyers to help legal departments anticipate and respond to challenges that might arise in the year ahead.

Following federal lawmakers’ initiative to lower prescription drug prices under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, several states have taken similar steps to limit certain drugs’ prices. Drug affordability for consumers is a top priority for federal and state lawmakers and regulators because it is a bipartisan issue that directly impacts consumers’ wallets. With negotiations between the federal government and drug manufacturers over 10 drugs’ prices for Medicare beneficiaries well underway under the Inflation Reduction Act, 11 states, including Maryland and Colorado, have created drug affordability review boards to more directly tackle rising prices for both brand and generic drugs.[1] And another 12 states have pending legislation to create these boards.[2] 

On March 1, 2024, Judge Colm F. Connolly of the District of Delaware granted the government’s motion for summary judgment in the first substantive ruling on the constitutionality of the Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”).  The court first held that AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP and AstraZeneca AB’s (collectively, “AstraZeneca”) lacked Article III standing to challenge the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (“CMS”) guidance under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”).  The court then rejected AstraZeneca’s challenge to the IRA as an unconstitutional taking on the merits because, in its view, AstraZeneca “ha[d] not identified a property interest protected by the Constitution that is put in jeopardy by the Program.”[1] The court’s opinion comes on the eve of oral argument in a closely-followed related case in the District of New Jersey and marks a significant development in IRA jurisprudence.

On February 12, 2024, Judge David Alan Ezra of the Western District of Texas dismissed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Drug Price Negotiation Program of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, P.L. 177-169 (IRA).[1]