From Simone Ricci
There European Commission announced yesterday that it had launched an investigation against two giants such as Johnson & Johnson And Novartis: L'Community antitrust it is therefore ready to ascertain a new flaw, also because there is a strong suspicion that the multinationals in question may have restricted market access to generic competitors in the Netherlands. Brussels, as is known, also holds these powers to protect competition and the market and its objective in this case will be to ascertain whether the pharmaceutical company of New Brunswick and that of Basel have actually collaborated to exclude other potential companies from the related sector at generic versions of Fentanyl, one of the most powerful synthetic medicines.
The latter was in fact introduced fifty years ago as an anesthetic; currently, however, after the 2005 patent it is intended for cancer patients. In detail, the third quarter of 2011 was characterized by sales amounted to 155 million dollars for another Johnson & Johnson drug, namely Duragesic; the drop compared to the previous three months was really substantial, almost sixteen percentage points (-15.8%), a decline that many justified with the very strong competition. Among other things, there are other pharmaceutical versions developed by Novartis itself and by the American Milan. As already mentioned, the investigation concerns the Swiss company, but it has not yet wanted to provide other details in this regard, unlike J&J, which is collaborating quite effectively.
October 22, 2011 –
