Healthy Skepticism Library item: 12458

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Publication type: news

White A.
Pfizer Among Firms EU Antitrust Officials Probe Over New Drugs, Competition
TheDay.com 2008 Jan 17
http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=f2d84b32-f10f-4906-8af2-df365a7b94ec

Full text:

European Union antitrust regulators said Wednesday they were raiding pharmaceutical companies – including Pfizer Inc., GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi Aventis – in a probe into why so few new medicines and drug makers are emerging.
EU antitrust chief Neelie Kroes said she was looking at the entire pharmaceutical industry and wanted to know why generic drugs were so slow to be launched in Europe. Generic medicines are made by other companies after the original developer of the drug loses its exclusive patent rights.

The European Commission said it was conducting inspections at the European premises of a number of pharmaceutical makers – both research-based and generic – including some based outside Europe.

U.S.-based Pfizer, Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi-Aventis of France – the world’s three biggest drug makers – along with Anglo-Swedish AstraZeneca, Merck Sharp & Dohme, Johnson & Johnson’s Belgian unit, Wyeth of Madison, New Jersey, and Sandoz International GmbH, the generics division of Swiss company Novartis, confirmed they had been the target of surprise raids and were cooperating with regulators.

Kroes said the EU was working closely with U.S. officials – “We’re not the only one active in this,” she said.

The EU executive will examine whether companies were deliberately preventing new firms from entering the market by abusing patent rights and launching “vexatious litigation” to ward off potential rivals.

It said the probe was partly triggered by its 2005 case against AstraZeneca in which the company was fined 60 million euros ($73 million) for filing misleading information to patent offices to delay generic versions of its ulcer drug Losec for most of the 1990s.

Fewer new medicines are reaching the market, regulators said, one sign that competition may not be working. Only 28 new types of drugs were launched from 2000 to 2004, far fewer than the 40 that hit the market from 1995 to 1999.

“The Commission wants to investigate the reasons for this and in particular whether any agreements restricting competition or unilateral abuses of dominant position are connected to it,” the EU said.

Regulators said they would also look into deals between drug companies – such as settlements in patent disputes – that might violate EU cartel rules.