Britain Accuses Glaxo of Paying Rivals for Delay of Generic Antidepressant

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/business/global/britain-accuses-glaxosmithkline-of-conspiring-with-rivals.html?_r=0

LONDON — British antitrust authorities on Friday accused the pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline of paying three rivals to delay the introduction of a generic version of an antidepressant drug. It is the latest so-called pay-for-delay case drawing scrutiny from regulators on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Office of Fair Trading in Britain contended that Glaxo had abused its dominant position in the market, kept prices artificially high and denied “significant cost savings” to Britain’s state-run health provider, the National Health Service.

The British case centers on efforts by three companies, Alpharma, Generics (U.K.) and Norton Healthcare, to market an alternative to Seroxat, GlaxoSmithKline’s brand of paroxetine. The company sells it in the United States under the brand name Paxil.

In recent years, regulators in Europe and the United States have paid greater attention to pay-for-delay deals, suspecting that they may allow pharmaceutical companies to make big profits by exploiting a brief but lucrative period of monopoly over the supply of a product.