Grey marketeers (or parallel importers as they prefer to be called) exploit the resulting price differential.
Sources ReprintsBig drug firms have battled since the 1960s to frustrate parallel importers, but have almost always lost in court.
So the court's judgment has met with uproar from consumer groups, as well as parallel importers and discount retailers.
In order to obtain marketing permission, generic drug producers and parallel importers had to drop their work on the capsule and start over copying the new tablet form.
Companies known as parallel importers have been able to make a business of shipping products from southern European countries such as Spain and Greece, where drug prices are low, to northern countries like Britain and Germany, where prices are higher.
Companies known as "parallel importers" buy drugs in countries where they are cheap, ship them to countries where they are expensive (mainly Britain and Germany), repackage them for the local market and sell them at a profit.
Such variations partly protect firms against parallel importers that buy in one market and resell in another.Travel and education are enlarging tastes all over the continent, but regional differences remain strong.
Some will see it as a defeat for free trade: others as a victory for intellectual-property rights.If the court rules as expected, it will please many manufacturers of branded goods, who find parallel importers a growing headache.
Parallel imports can damage a brand's value and the profits go to the importer.
In Sweden, a ban on parallel imports was lifted in 1995, encouraging an influx that now accounts for more than 6% of the total drugs market.Parallel importers like to argue that because they are licensed and regulated in the same way as any drug company, theirs is not an arbitrage business but one based on economic fundamentals.
