The Federal Trade Commission's biggest settlement to date—$1.2 billion in a pay-for-delay case—came out of federal court in Philadelphia on Thursday.

Cephalon, now owned by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, agreed to settle a suit filed by the FTC in 2008 over the company's reverse-payment arrangements with generic drugmakers.

Reverse-payment settlements are the deals made by major pharmaceutical companies with generic drugmakers in order to keep the cheaper drugs off the market and, in this case, Cephalon had made deals with four generic drugmakers ranging from $25 million to $164 million to protect its name-brand wakefulness drug called Provigil.