Bristol-Myers Squibb settles FTC charges
Bristol-Myers Squibb (B-MS) has settled charges that it engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts over the past decade to obstruct the entry of low-price generic competition for three of Bristol's widely-used pharmaceutical products: two anti-cancer drugs, Taxol and Platinol, and the anti-anxiety agent BuSpar.
According to the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) complaint, B-MS's illegal conduct protected nearly US$2bn (€1.81bn) in annual sales at a high cost to cancer patients and other consumers, who, being denied access to lower-cost alternatives, were forced to overpay by hundreds of millions of dollars for important and often life-saving medications.
'Through B-MS's decade-long pattern of alleged anticompetitive acts, it avoided competition by abusing federal regulations in order to block generic entry; deceived the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to obtain unwarranted patent protection; paid a would-be generic rival over $70m (€63m) not to bring any competing products to market; and filed baseless patent infringement lawsuits to deter entry by generics.' said Joe Simons, director of the FTC's bureau of competition.
'The proposed consent order,' Simons said, 'will prohibit Bristol from engaging in unlawful behaviour that keeps competitive generic products off the market and harms consumers.'
The FTC's complaint charges that Bristol engaged in a pattern of conduct to delay generic competition to Taxol, Platinol, and BuSpar by abusing government regulatory processes.
In addition to this abuse, the complaint also states that Bristol entered into two unlawful agreements - one concerning BuSpar and another concerning Taxol - to obstruct generic competition and share monopoly profits. With respect to the BuSpar agreement, Bristol is alleged to have paid its potential buspirone rival over $70m to withhold competition until patent expiration, eliminating the only potential generic threat to BuSpar for the entire patent period. With respect to the Taxol agreement, the complaint alleges that Bristol conspired to list improperly an invalid patent in the Orange Book, the FDA's listing of approved drugs and its related patents. Accordingly, the proposed consent order restricts Bristol's ability to act in concert with other firms to delay generic competition.