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Some related articles :
Bristol-Myers Squibb to Pay $670 Million to Settle Lawsuits (January 8, 2003) |
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Bristol Said to Be Close to Deal on Suits Over Generic BuSparBy
MELODY PETERSEN Bristol-Myers Squibb is expected to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle lawsuits filed by more than two dozen state attorneys general, consumer groups and competitors that accuse it of illegally stalling the sale of a lower-priced version of its anxiety treatment, BuSpar, according to two officials of parties who had filed the lawsuits. Bristol-Myers did not return calls seeking comment last night. The two officials said that Bristol-Myers was close to a settlement in the case and that an announcement could come as soon as today. The main patent on BuSpar expired in November 2000. But just as Mylan Laboratories, a generic manufacturer, was ready to ship its version of the medicine, Bristol-Myers filed a second patent with federal regulators, which stopped the shipments. Mylan and two other generic drug makers filed suit against Bristol-Myers. Dozens of state attorneys general and consumer groups also sued Bristol-Myers, contending that patients and governments had been forced to pay millions of dollars too much for buspirone, as BuSpar is known generically, because the lower-price version was not available. Last February, Judge John G. Koeltl of Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that Bristol-Myers had acted improperly when it filed the additional patent on BuSpar with the Food and Drug Administration. The second patent covered a chemical substance made in the body of patients who take BuSpar. Drug companies generally have 20 years from the date a patent application is filed to sell a medicine exclusively. But in recent years, many brand-name drug makers, facing a wave of patent expirations on top-selling products, began aggressively to seek ways to extend the time they had to sell a drug without generic competition. The states and other parties have filed similar lawsuits against Bristol-Myers for keeping competitors from selling a lower-price version of Taxol, a cancer drug.
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© 2002 Global Action on Aging
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