The European Commission (EC) on Wednesday imposed fines totaling 428 million euros (582 million U.S. dollars) on the French pharmaceutical company Servier and five producers of generic medicines for implementing a strategy to exclude competitors and delay the entry of cheaper generic medicine.
The EC said Servier and the other five companies fined including Niche/Unichem, Matrix (now part of Mylan), Teva, Krka and Lupin, are involved in a series of deals aimed at protecting Servier's bestselling blood pressure medicine perindopril from price competition in the EU.
Perindopril is a blockbuster blood pressure control medicine and used to be Servier's best-selling product.
The strategy used by Servier is implemented through a technology acquisition and a series of patent settlements with generic rivals, according to the EC.
"Servier had a strategy to systematically buy out any competitive threats to make sure that they stayed out of the market. Such behaviour is clearly anti-competitive and abusive," EC Vice-President Joaquin Almunia, the competition policy chief said in a statement.
Almunia said, competitors cannot agree to share markets or market rents instead of competing, even when these agreements are in the form of patent settlements. Such practices directly harm patients, national health systems and taxpayers.
"Pharmaceutical companies should focus their efforts on innovating and competing rather than attempting to extract extra rents from patients," he added.
(Source: Xinhua)
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