As there are usually many ways of making a medication, lower cost generic versions of medications were quickly available in countries with an active generic industry like India and Indian generics were then available for export to countries that did not grant patents on pharmaceuticals [ 9].
He added that people should not judge the entire generic industry by a few isolated incidents.
Although some EU states, such as Britain, have a robust generic industry, others such as France do not.
The government enacted a compulsory licensing law, forcing drug makers to license products to the generic industry, even while the patent was in force.
The generic industry, as well as many insurers and employers who pay health care bills, said a much shorter period would suffice.
But the offer came with a request that the university lobby the government to delay regulations that could harm the generic industry.
When the law took effect, the generic industry took off, flooding the F.D.A. with approval requests: 800 applications in the first seven months.
The EU has invested hundreds of millions of euros in procuring medicines to the developing world and the development of a generic industry.
If the generic industry is beginning to mature, as some maintain, one of the main factors in that process has been, oddly, Schering-Plough.
"The investment can be $100,000 in the study and the windfall is in the billions," complained Bill Nixon, who heads the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, a generic industry trade group.
Mr. Neas, 65, who begins his new position next Monday, described the generic industry in an interview as a rare success story in the nation's quest to contain its health care costs.
