“It’s infuriating to realize that, as outlandish as they seem, these types of claims are finding a good deal of traction before many courts,” said Michelle Mello, a professor of law and medicine at Stanford University. “Drug companies are surely aware that the judicial trend has been toward more expansive recognition of commercial speech rights.”

The federal kickback law doesn’t mention copay assistance charities “and wasn’t designed with these programs in mind,” said Mello, of Stanford. Pfizer’s lawsuit “should be a loud, clanging call to Congress” to explicitly define drug assistance subsidies as illegal kickbacks, she said.