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The conviction of Pfizer Italia, a branch of Pfizer Inc, the world’s largest pharmaceutical industry, for abuse of a dominant position in the market of “prostaglandins” for the treatment of glaucoma has been confirmed. The Supreme Court of Cassation has endorsed the sentence with which the Court of Appeal had established, against the US giant, compensation of over 13 million euros in favor of the Ministry of Health and the ESM for having delayed, by seven months, the access of generic drugs to the Italian market, despite the fact that they were already available and of significantly lower cost.
Costs incurred by the national health service
In the sights of the judges, including the Council of State, the strategy implemented by Pfizer to defend the drug would have expired in September 2009. A dead line that the US company would have circumvented by asking for a divisional patent and a certificate of complementary protection. In the opinion of the appellant company only a way of protecting its legitimate property right. The judges had a different opinion, according to which the aim was to exclude the competitors. The compensation therefore included the increased costs incurred by the National Health Service from October 2009 to May 2010, required to reimburse a drug included in band “A” instead of those of the same therapeutic category but generic.
2024-01-02 18:54:53
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