The European Commission (EC) has imposed a fine of €462.6m ($502m) on Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries after investigating the company’s practices regarding the standard-of-care multiple sclerosis treatment, Copaxone. The fine relates to the company’s attempts to delay the entry of competitors to Copaxone by artificially extending the therapy’s patent protection and disseminating misleading information about rival products.
The gold standard of business intelligence. Teva held a basic patent for Copaxone’s active ingredient, glatiramer acetate, which expired in 2015. However, the commission found that Teva extended Copaxone’s exclusivity by misusing patent procedures and disseminating false information.
The markets affected include Czechia, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain. The EC’s decision marks the first instance of imposing a fine for such dual practices, which together constitute a single, continuous infringement of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The fine was calculated following the commission’s 2006 guidelines on fines.
Its investigation uncovered that Teva misused patent procedures by filing staggered divisional patent applications, creating a complex web of secondary patents around the multiple sclerosis therapy. Access the most comprehensive Company Profiles on the market, powered by GlobalData. Save hours of research.
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