In 2005 regulators fined AstraZeneca 60 million euros for giving misleading information to several patent offices to extend the life of a blockbuster antacid drug, Losec, and delaying the entry of generic drugs.
Drugmakers often argue that because of increasing demands for data by regulators, the size and duration of clinical trials has risen steeply, delaying the entry of drugs to the market and bumping up their R&D spending.
The report reached a damning, albeit tentative, conclusion: the drugs firms use a variety of unfair tactics to protect their expensive blockbuster drugs by delaying the entry of cheaper generic rivals.
And that hardship for hospitals could worsen, both because of declining enrollment in pharmacy schools and because a recent change by those schools has lengthened the required study to six years from five, delaying the entry of new pharmacists into the market.
Should these links fail, they have the potential to delay the entry of a screened baby into therapy after testing positive for a preventable disease.
According to the FTC complaint, Schering settled a patent suit with Upsher-Smith in June 1997, agreeing to pay $60 million in exchange for Upsher-Smith delaying the entry of its generic form of K-Dur into the market until September 2001.
The evidence shows that subsidies to failing companies not only waste resources in keeping obsolete and inefficient firms alive, but also delay the entry of new and more efficient organizational models.
A pro-market strategy rejects subsidies not only because they're a waste of taxpayers' money but also because they prop up inefficient firms, delaying the entry of new and more efficient competitors.
Through building patent landscapes in Brazil, China, and India and interviews with manufacturers and experts in the field, we found intense patenting activity for the HPV and pneumococcal vaccines that could potentially delay the entry of new manufacturers.
