After months of squabbling over allegedly stolen trade secrets, AbbVie (ABBV) has settled litigation with a small company called Alvotech that sought to sell a biosimilar version of the Humira blockbuster medicine.
The settlement is only the latest such deal in which AbbVie has successfully delayed a would-be rival from marketing its own version of the rheumatoid arthritis treatment, which generated $17.3 billion in U.S. sales last year. As in the settlements AbbVie reached with several other drug makers, Alvotech cannot market its version until next year — in this case, no sooner than July 2023.