The European Commission announced this Thursday a fine of 462.6 million euros to the pharmaceutical company Teva for abuse its dominant position to delay the market entry of rival drugs to its star product against multiple sclerosis, Copaxone, against the fair competition rules of the European Union.
The case dates back to 2022, when Brussels began a formal investigation and subsequently accused the laboratory of artificially extending the patent protection of the medicine and helping to spread misleading information to “discredit” a competitor to complicate its entry and acceptance on the community market.
‘Copaxone’ It is the best-selling drug by the Teva laboratory, with headquarters in Israel but with subsidiaries in several EU countries, but the patent that protected the drug’s glatiramer acetate expired in 2015.
Brussels believes that from then on, Teva acted to artificially extend the commercial exclusivity of ‘Copaxone’ by strategically filing and withdrawing fractional patents, which in practice delayed the entry of generic competitors into the market on several occasions.
These types of split patents come from a first broader “mother” patent and may cover new findings that overlap significantly, with which the patent owner can “multiply the obstacles” to other trademarks.
The practices that Brussels sanctions affected the markets of Belgium, Czech Republic, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Germany and Spain; in some of them, such as Spanish, even until the beginning of this year.
The Community Executive maintains that Teva’s conduct, which lasted between four and nine years depending on the Member State, can having prevented catalog prices from decreasingwith a negative impact on public health budgets, and highlights that once the rival product entered the market, catalog prices decreased by up to 80%.
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