Law360, New York ( May 8, 2015, 5:28 PM EDT) -- Well, that was a close one. The March 3 oral argument in In re Cipro Cases I & II, Case No. S198616, left observers expecting — and the pharmaceutical industry fearing — that the California Supreme Court might one-up the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in FTC v. Actavis Inc., 133 S.Ct. 2223 (2013), and impose a stringent new antitrust test under California's Cartwright Act for settlements of brand-generic Hatch-Waxman patent infringement litigation. The result would have been a new nationwide default rule for Hatch-Waxman settlements, and a potential collision with federal antitrust and patent law and policy. And as a practical matter, initial review of those settlements might have shifted from the Federal Trade Commission to the California Attorney General's Office, which would have had a mandate to use the new tool the state Supreme Court gave it....