On November 06, 2025, the Arbitration Court of the Moscow District considered a cassation appeal in case A40-284176/2024 against the rulings of the courts of first and appellate instance in the field of pharmaceutical procurement.
«A.Zalesov & Partners» Patent & Law Firm team represented the interests of a third party, the auction winner, who did not assert independent claims regarding the subject matter of the dispute.
Upon the consideration of the case, the courts of three instances upheld the illegality of decision of the FAS of Russia of September 25, 2024, in case 24/44/99/P16 regarding the results of an unscheduled inspection of compliance with the Russian legislation on the contract system in procurement in the actions of the procurement commission of Ministry of Property of the Kursk Region during an electronic auction for the right to conclude a government contract for the supply of pharmaceuticals (INN: Dapagliflozin) to benefit citizens for social security purposes.
The courts of first, appellate and cassation instances upheld the arguments of Ministry of Property of the Kursk Region and of the third party, the auction winner, that the Procurement Commission had properly verified the accuracy of the information provided in the application and had rightfully admitted the winner's application to the auction.
As the courts have correctly established, the legality of the Procurement Commission's actions is determined on the date they were taken, taking into account the information and factual circumstances that existed on the relevant date of the electronic auction results.
The courts agreed with our argument that the mere fact of registering a generic medication and introducing it into civil circulation, even with valid patents, could not be considered by the Procurement Commission as an infringement of anyone's patents in the absence of final and binding judicial decisions confirming the patent infringement. In the absence of a decision establishing an infringement of the relevant patent, when the medication's registration is valid and it has not been excluded from the State Register of Medicines, it is presumed that the medication's circulation complies with the current legislation of the Russian Federation.
The courts also upheld our argument that independently assessing the legality of registering medicinal products and introducing them into civil circulation, verifying the freedom-to-operate of the product, and rejecting the application on grounds not provided for by law, based solely on assumptions and/or concerns about the supply of goods that could infringe patent rights, were not within the competence of the procurement commission and would be illegal.
The ruling of the Arbitration Court of the Moscow District in case A40-284176/2024 was the first cassation court ruling in cases with similar circumstances.
The client's interests in the case were represented by the Head of IP Practice Aleksey Zalesov and Senior Associate Darya Kushnarenko.