"The Claritin Case How One Firm Played the Patent Game"

[Thiru Balasubramaniam <thiru@cptech.org>]

http://www.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/articles/0,3266,34377,00.html

NATION
NOVEMBER 22, 1999 VOL. 154 NO. 21 

                          The Claritin Case
                          How One Firm Played the Patent Game
                          BY VIVECA NOVAK


PHARM AID: Seniors give Gore and Senators an earful 

Al Gore doesn't mince words when it comes to pushing for
cheaper prescription drugs. So it makes sense that he opposes
efforts by pharmaceuticals companies to extend their patent
rights in order to block cheaper generic drugs from reaching the
market.

What doesn't make sense is that one of Gore's senior advisers,
top-tier lobbyist Peter Knight, is a hired gun for pharmaceutical
giant Schering-Plough, which is in a red-hot battle to stretch
out its patent for the best-selling allergy medication Claritin
beyond 2002. The New Jersey-based company paid Knight's
firm $100,000 in the first half of this year alone.

Of course, Schering-Plough would pay almost any amount of
money to protect its exclusive right to sell Claritin, a drug
that brings it more than $5 million in revenue a day. Claritin sales
totaled $1.9 billion last year, and will balloon to $4 billion by
2002, according to a market analyst. To keep the money coming
in, the company doubled its lobbying outlay starting in 1996 to
more than $4 million in 1998. 

<SNIP>

[Senator Orrin] Hatch <SNIP> has used Schering-Plough's Gulfstream IV 
jet five times this year for his presidential campaign, reimbursing the 
company at first-class-airfare rates, as permitted by law.

Patent extensions for drugs are rare. 

<SNIP>

So Schering-Plough has tried to work the system every way it can.
First it wanted Congress to approve a straight extension of its
patent. When that didn't fly, it tried a bill that would have
shifted any patent-extension decision away from Congress to a new
review board at the Patent and Trademark Office, and defined
criteria for such extensions in ways that tended to favor the
drug companies. But that bill, quietly introduced by New Jersey
Senator Frank Lautenberg, failed. This year the crusade has been
more public: New Jersey's other Senator, Democrat Robert
Torricelli, introduced the bill one day after the company gave
$50,000 to the committee he chairs to help elect Democrats to
the Senate. He says the timing was a coincidence.

Schering-Plough argues that additional patent years are only
fair. Claritin was stuck in the Food and Drug Administration
approval pipeline longer than many drugs, it claims, with the
clock ticking on its 17-year patent. Schering-Plough also says
Claritin profits help fund research for new drugs. But, its
opponents counter, what about Claritin patients--who pay as
much as $2.66 a dose instead of the 50[cents] or less they would
pay, analysts figure, if a generic version of the drug were
available? If the patent expires on time, according to a
University of Minnesota study funded in part by the
generic-drug industry, consumers could save $7.33 billion over
five years. Those arguments helped persuade Montana G.O.P.
Senator Conrad Burns, who faces a tough re-election fight next
year, to drop his support for the bill this fall, saying he
wanted no part in forcing millions of Americans to pay higher prices.

<SNIP>

....the FDA is currently considering
its new super-Claritin for market approval. Its patent wouldn't
expire until 2014.