[Ip-health] Wall Street Journal Health Blog: From Patent Thickets to Payoffs: How Big Pharma Fights Generics

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/11/28/from-patent-thickets-to-payoffs-how-=
big-pharma-fights-generics/print/

 From Patent Thickets to Payoffs: How Big Pharma Fights Generics

Posted By Jacob Goldstein On November 28, 2008 @ 8:47 am In Generics |
5 Comments

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=92
efforts to keep generics at bay, =93competition in this industry does
not work as well as it should,=94 Neelie Kroes, the EU commissioner for
competition, said in a statement. She also warned, =93the Commission
will not hesitate to open antitrust cases against companies where
there are indications that the antitrust rules may have been breached.=94

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

A =93patent thicket,=94 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=92s 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=92s 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=92t 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=92s 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 =96 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.

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
thiru@keionline.org


Tel: +41 22 791 6727
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