EU To Seek Details Of Deals Delaying Generic Drugs

EU antitrust regulators plan to review drug patent settlements struck this year to delay cheaper generics going to market, as part of their crackdown on illegal deals, a senior European Commission official said on Wednesday.

"We will probably carry out another monitoring exercise at the beginning of 2011, covering January 2010 to December 2010," Dominik Schnichels, who heads the European Commission's pharmaceuticals taskforce, told a competition conference. In a critical report on the sector in July last year, the Commission vowed to pursue drugmakers suspected of anticompetitive acts after an investigation found such delays had cost healthcare providers and consumers billions of euros.

It later started probes into privately owned drugmaker Servier and several firms that make generic drugs and also raided several drugmakers, including Sanofi-Aventis, Novartis and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries.

In January this year, the EU watchdog sought details of deals between originator and generic pharmaceutical companies from July 2008 to December 2009. Its report showed there were fewer anticompetitive agreements.

"We need to see if the positive trends we have observed continue," Schnichels said at the conference, which was organized by the Global Competition Review.

U.S. lawmakers are also tackling the issue.