As we mentioned in February, the European Commission was examining the practices of pharmaceutics companies with regards to their delay in introducing cheaper, generic versions of a painkiller 'fentanyl' on the Dutch market (Consumer health update). Since the Commission could establish from the internal documents of the pharma companies that they agreed to delay the introduction of the generic meds for 'a part of [the] cake', the Commission had no doubts that the so-called 'co-promotion agreement' was really an anticompetition agreement and infringed the EU law. The US company Johnson & Johnson was fined with almost 11 million USD, while the Swiss company Novartis has to pay almost 5,5 million Euro in fines (Commission fines Johnson & Johnson and Novartis Euro 16 million for delaying market entry of generic pain-killer fentanyl). Wednesday, 11 December 2013
Not quite painless results of delaying entry of a generic painkiller to Dutch market
As we mentioned in February, the European Commission was examining the practices of pharmaceutics companies with regards to their delay in introducing cheaper, generic versions of a painkiller 'fentanyl' on the Dutch market (Consumer health update). Since the Commission could establish from the internal documents of the pharma companies that they agreed to delay the introduction of the generic meds for 'a part of [the] cake', the Commission had no doubts that the so-called 'co-promotion agreement' was really an anticompetition agreement and infringed the EU law. The US company Johnson & Johnson was fined with almost 11 million USD, while the Swiss company Novartis has to pay almost 5,5 million Euro in fines (Commission fines Johnson & Johnson and Novartis Euro 16 million for delaying market entry of generic pain-killer fentanyl). 
