Supreme Court declines to hear 'pay-to-delay' pharma case Read more: Supreme Court declines to hear 'pay-to-delay' pharma case - FierceHealthcare htt

The federal government's decade-long quest to limit pharmaceutical manufacturers' actions to keep generic medications off the market for a specified time--through deals called "pay-to-delay"--ran into a new challenge Monday: The U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, declined to hear a federal appeals court decision from a year ago that had upheld the practice. In that earlier ruling, the New York-based appeals court dismissed a legal challenge regarding Bayer AG to pay a potential generic competitor, Teva Pharmaceutical's Barr Pharmaceuticals, in a 1997 deal to delay introduction of a generic version of Cipro, a popular antibiotic.