On Tuesday, December 4, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it had submitted a comment regarding the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) revised draft guidance on citizen petitions. This is the latest public step by the agency to highlight its continued close scrutiny of potential abuses of the citizen petition process to block or slow the entry of would-be competitors into pharmaceutical markets. Although substantively the FTC’s comment does not provide new guidance as to what it will consider to be anticompetitive citizen petitioning activity, it is a strong signal of the FTC’s support for the FDA’s revised guidance, as well as the agency’s intent to remain active in challenging FDA petitioning activity that it deems to be anticompetitive.
