Imagine that a drug manufacturer figured out how to compete with a blockbuster drug by making a cheaper and more effective alternative. The pharmaceutical company that makes the blockbuster drug starts flooding the market with false advertisements about the safety of the alternative drug before it is even available to consumers, effectively taking away the new drug’s ability to compete. In this hypothetical, there are two potential victims: the new manufacturer that could have competed on the merits and the consumers (and possibly third-party payors) that lost the ability to choose a potentially better product or benefit from the price decrease of the blockbuster drug. Should antitrust law remedy this situation?
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