A U.S. district court has denied Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) motion to dismiss a civil antitrust suit brought by Pfizer over Remicade.

Remicade treats Crohn’s disease, adult ulcerative colitis, ankylosing spondylitis, adult plaque psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, and rheumatic arthritis. It is the fifth best-selling drug worldwide and J&J’s top medication with the sale of $6.7 billion in 2016, making it a flagship product for the company to maintain.

The suit, filed by Pfizer last September, alleges that J&J’s sales maneuvers featured exclusionary contracts with insurers, coercive rebate policies, and anticompetitive bundling, all of which were designed to block insurers from receiving reimbursement and keep hospitals from purchasing Remicade’s biosimilars such as Celltrion’s Inflectra. Pfizer is in charge of marketing Inflectra in the U.S.

Janssen Biotech Inc., a subsidiary of J&J, argued that it was competing fairly in the market, and Inflectra had just failed to demonstrate sufficient value to patients, doctors and insurers.

Pfizer said, however, the U.S. court saw the company’s claims as plausible, according to a note Pfizer provided in response to an inquiry from Korea Biomedical Review.

“J&J’s efforts to foreclose Pfizer from the market, as Pfizer has alleged, have led to increased prices for consumers and limited competitive options for end-payers, providers, and patients,” judge J. Joyner, who is in charge of the case, was quoted as saying. “Pfizer provides detailed allegations regarding J&J’s exclusionary terms with many of the nation’s largest insurers, the incentive structure that forces end payers and providers into accepting those terms, Pfizer’s efforts to compete, including its guarantees that Inflectra would cost less than Remicade, and showed how market participants on many levels are injured from J&J’s ability to sell Remicade without having to compete with Inflectra and other biosimilars.”

Pfizer welcomed the court’s decision.

“Pfizer is pleased that the court denied Johnson & Johnson’s motion, and this case can now move forward,” a company official said. “The court ruled that Pfizer’s complaint sufficiently alleged that J&J’s scheme of exclusionary contracts has unlawfully denied patients access to important treatment options.”

She went on to say, “Pfizer believes this anti-competitive conduct cannot continue if we want to have a vibrant biosimilar market in the United States.”

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