Reed Smith’s Life Sciences Health Industry Group will be hosting an upcoming CLE webinar, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: The Best and Worst Drug/Medical Device Decisions of 2016” on Wednesday, January 18, 2017 at 12 p.m. ET. Each year since 2007, James Beck, Reed Smith’s Senior Life Sciences Policy Analyst and the founder … Continue Reading
Reed Smith’s Life Sciences Health Industry Group is hosting a Life Sciences CLE Day at our Philadelphia office on Thursday, November 10. The day starts with breakfast and networking at 8:30 a.m. and sessions commence at 9 a.m. The event, which includes a working lunch, concludes at 2:30 p.m. This program is geared toward in-house … Continue Reading
The Reed Smith Life Sciences Health Industry Group will be hosting a free CLE webinar, “Social Media Issues for Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Companies,” on November 2, 2016 at 12 p.m. ET. Social media can be a great way to engage with consumers and build your brand. For pharmaceutical and medical device companies, however, it … Continue Reading
Reed Smith attorneys Jason Casell and Steve Miller will be moderating and presenting respectively on the “Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices Industries Update” panel on November 10, 2016 at DRI’s Government Enforcement and Corporate Compliance Seminar. This panel will examine recent government enforcement activities and legal decisions that might shape investigations, litigation, and resolutions of government … Continue Reading
Pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers are increasingly finding themselves resolving disputes through international arbitration. After London, Singapore is now arguably the second most important arbitration center in the world, meaning the Singapore International Arbitration Centre’s (SIAC) new arbitration rules, which were due to come into effect on June 1, 2016, but will now come into … Continue Reading
Five of our Reed Smith life sciences team members – Jim Beck, Steve McConnell, Eric Alexander, Steven Boranian and Rachel Weil – blog on pharmaceutical and medical device product liability news for the award-winning Drug and Device Law blog. If you’re not already familiar with the Drug and Device Law blog, it’s your one-stop source … Continue Reading
The Reed Smith Life Sciences Health Industry Group will be hosting an upcoming CLE webinar “Personal Jurisdiction: What Bauman Does and Doesn’t Mean, the Other Side’s Response, and Why Corporations Should Care” on June 14, 2016 at 12 p.m. ET. Reed Smith presenters Jim Beck and Steve McConnell will be discussing how plaintiffs’ lawyers are … Continue Reading
Upcoming changes to Google AdWords’ ad formats will have a significant impact on pharmaceutical companies that engage in paid search advertising. In a letter to its major media agencies last month, Google announced that it will be removing two of its popular pharmaceutical advertising units. Black Box Ad Format On July 20, 2015, Google’s Black … Continue Reading
When the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in Perez v. Wyeth Lab, Inc. that if pharmaceutical manufacturer directly markets to consumers, the learned intermediary doctrine does not apply, it was deemed a “revolutionary,” decision. However, since the ruling, every New Jersey court which has confronted this issue has found that the DTC exception did not … Continue Reading
The United States Supreme Court has declined to hear a challenge to the Alameda County Drug Disposal Ordinance (“Ordinance”) brought by three pharmaceutical trade organizations. The Court’s decision leaves in force the Ninth Circuit decision, which found that the Ordinance, requiring pharmaceutical manufacturers to fund drug take-back programs in the county, did not interfere with … Continue Reading
Since the general disclosure rule for provider-manufacturer relationships in France was enacted into law on January 1, 2012, its compliance and enforcement have been a common point of discussion for health care professionals, pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers, and government officials, among others. As Reed Smith partner Daniel Kadar points out in “The French Sunshine … Continue Reading
Today the House Energy and Commerce Committee is marking up H.R. 6, the 21st Century Cures Act, a high-profile, bipartisan bill that seeks to accelerate the pace of medical cures in the United States through a variety of reforms addressing drug and device development and approval, clinical trial design, research funding, interoperability of health technology, … Continue Reading
On May 5, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a report entitled "FDA Has Made Progress on Oversight and Inspections of Manufacturers of Generic Drugs" in response to a Congressional request expressing concerns about the safety and quality of generic drugs produced by manufacturers outside the United States. The OIG report contains an analysis of FDA's inspections of generic drug manufacturers over the past several years, and provides several recommendations for the FDA going forward.… Continue Reading
On April 16, 2015, President Barack Obama signed into law the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA). The bill permanently transforms the structure of Medicare physician reimbursement and enacts several changes to Medicare payment, program integrity and policy provisions that will affect both health care providers and pharmaceutical/medical device manufacturers. The most … Continue Reading
The French government issued a bill on March 17 for the extension of class actions to health-related claims in France. Starting today, March 31, the text will be discussed at the French National Assembly, particularly to address the issue of compensation for personal injury within the framework of the proposed class action.… Continue Reading
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), and the Generic Pharmaceutical Association (GPhA) have jointly filed a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking for review of the Ninth Circuit's decision in PhRMA v. County of Alameda, in which the court ruled that Alameda County's Safe Drug Disposal Ordinance - requiring pharmaceutical manufacturers to establish or participate in a program for collecting unwanted prescription drugs from consumers - was constitutional.… Continue Reading
The Alameda County (CA) Safe Drug Disposal Ordinance (Alameda County Code Chapter 6.53, §§ 6.53.010-6.53.120) is one of several county-wide regulations across the United States to enforce the establishment of and/or participation in Product Stewardship Plans on the part of pharmaceutical manufacturers, with the ultimate goal of collecting unwanted drugs for purposes of disposal. The … Continue Reading
Over on the Drug & Device Law blog, Reed Smith partner Jim Beck applauds the recent decision in Tyree v. Boston Scientific Corp., a case filed in the Southern District of West Virginia. Tyree manages to narrow the scope of the 2007 decision in State ex rel. Johnson & Johnson v. Karl, in which the … Continue Reading
Over on the Drug & Device Law blog, the team maintains several scorecards and cheat sheets on product liability litigation topics relevant to pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers. Reed Smith associate Kevin Hara has updated the blog's adverse event report cheat sheet to include the most recent decisions from across the country addressing whether adverse event reports can be used as admissible evidence on the grounds of causation. In discussing this issue, Kevin advocates the legal principle that if a plaintiff cannot prove a particular product's capability of adverse event causation, the court should rule in favor of the defendent.… Continue Reading
The Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health & Human Services issued a Special Advisory Bulletin (SAB) on September 19, 2014 discussing the coupon programs employed by many pharmaceutical manufacturers to reduce or entirely eliminate patient copayments to obtain brand-name drugs. As mentioned on our Health Industry Washington Watch blog, the SAB … Continue Reading
Earlier this week, the FDA issued two draft guidances on social media, and Reed Smith attorneys Colleen Davies, Celeste Letourneau, Kevin Madagan, and Jennifer Pike have written a client alert that analyzes them both in detail. The first guidance pertains to product claims and risk information on platforms like Twitter and sponsored links, and the second to correcting third party misinformation that appears in social media, such as in comments on a Facebook page or website.
A key date to keep in mind is that the deadline for comments is September 16, 2014.… Continue Reading
The Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services has issued a proposed rule that would institute several changes to the health care program civil monetary penalty (CMP) regulations. Under the proposed rule, the OIG would have the expanded authority to enforce significant CMPs on providers and suppliers in a variety of scenarios.
Reed Smith has prepared a Client Alert summarizing and analyzing the Proposed Rule, including the various scenarios under which CMPs could be issued under the proposed regulations as well as the changes in technical language proposed by OIG to more clearly define the scope of CMP regulations.… Continue Reading
Drug and medical device manufacturers are often faced with difficult challenges in determining the country of origin for their products, which are often sourced, processed and manufactured in multiple countries. As detailed by the article "Origin of the Pieces: How to Determine a Pharmaceutical Product's 'Country of Origin,'" written by Reed Smith lawyers Jeffrey Orenstein and Lorraine Campos, there are a variety of factors that must be taken into consideration when answering the country of origin question for a pharmaceutical product - chief among which is who is asking the question. This article provides an overview of the principal regulatory schemes and their country of origin standards in order to help provide clarity to pharmaceutical companies in an often confusing and frustrating process.… Continue Reading
As mentioned on our Health Industry Washington Watch blog, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a plan intended to incentivize manufacturers to voluntarily update their prescription drug and biologics labels. The plan calls for the use of a government contractor to assist manufacturers in making these updates according to the labeling guidelines … Continue Reading
