Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14700

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Goldstein J.
From Patent Thickets to Payoffs: How Big Pharma Fights Generics
The Wall Street Journal 2008 Nov 28
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/11/28/from-patent-thickets-to-payoffs-how-big-pharma-fights-generics/

Full text:

Remember that big raid back in January, when European officials swooped into drug-company offices around Europe to investigate whether the companies were pushing their fight against generics too far?

A report out today suggests that, as a result of the drugmakers’ efforts to keep generics at bay, “competition in this industry does not work as well as it should,” Neelie Kroes, the EU commissioner for competition, said in a statement. She also warned, “the Commission will not hesitate to open antitrust cases against companies where there are indications that the antitrust rules may have been breached.”

The report cites a number of strategies pharma uses to hold onto exclusivity.

A “patent thicket,” also known as a patent cluster, consists of hundreds of different patents filed across Europe on a single drug, with some patents coming late in the drug’s life cycle. The patent maze can make it hard for a would-be generic competitor to figure out when relevant patents have expired, and when it’s safe to bring a generic to market.

Patent litigation quadrupled between 2000 and 2007, the report found, with generic companies winning most of the cases in which a final judgment was rendered. And settlements, including those in which drug companies pay generic companies to delay market entry, totaled more than 200 million Euro, the report found.

The report doesn’t single out individual companies. But the January raid targeted big players, including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sanofi-Aventis and GlaxoSmithKline. And a follow-up raid earlier this week included the generics giant Teva.

The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations released a long response to the report. Here’s a bit that captures the gist:

The report acknowledges that patents are key to pharmaceutical innovation and should be protected. It then contradicts itself by questioning the right of the industry to use perfectly lawful practices – such as patent portfolios, patent litigation and the release of improved medicines. These are essential for innovators to protect their huge investments in R&D.