# Pay-for-Delay **Pay-for-delay** (or **reverse-payment settlement**) is a deal in which a brand-name drug manufacturer pays a generic or [[Biosimilar]] competitor to *delay* bringing its cheaper version to market — typically to settle a patent dispute on terms that keep prices high. The payment runs "backward" (patent holder pays the alleged infringer), which is what makes it suspect. ## Why It Matters Pay-for-delay directly preserves monopoly pricing past the point where competition should lower it; the FTC has long treated these settlements as potential antitrust violations (the Supreme Court allowed scrutiny in *FTC v. Actavis*, 2013). Together with [[Patent Evergreening]], it is one of the two principal tactics manufacturers use to stretch exclusivity — a recurring target in the [[Drug Pricing]] reform agenda that [[Big Pharma]] resists. See [[Drug Pricing]].