It would seem a business executive’s dream: legally pay a competitor to keep its product off the market for years.

Congress has failed to stop it, but for more than a decade generic drug makers and big-name pharmaceutical companies have been winning court rulings that allowed it.

Until this month. Now, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia has rejected the arrangements by ruling that a payment aimed at keeping a low-priced generic copy of the drug off the market for a certain period of time is anticompetitive on its face.

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