Federal Circuit Holds Generic Drugs Manufactured in the U.S. from API Produced in India Qualify for Sale to U.S. under Trade Agreements Act (Acetris Decision)
Earlier today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a decision that is sure to send shockwaves through the generic drug industry. In Acetris, the Federal Circuit held that a generic drug manufactured in the United States complied with the Trade Agreements Act (“TAA”) and could be sold to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The court made this determination even though the drug’s active pharmaceutical ingredient (“API”) came from a non-designated country, India. In reaching its decision, the court broke away from longstanding Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) precedent that the country where the API was produced dictated the location of “substantial transformation” and thus the country of origin for any resulting drug. The court held that under the Federal Acquisition Regulation (“FAR”), to qualify as a “U.S.-made end product” under the TAA, a drug must be either “manufactured” in the United States or “substantially transformed” in the United States—but not be both.
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