Supreme Court Gives Generic-Drug Makers a Win

Rodney Dangerfield should have been the mascot for generic drug makers when he was alive. The industry gets no respect.

But it does get a boatload of cash. And it took a big win last week at the Supreme Court when the justices ruled that generic drug makers “they can argue in court that their brand-name rivals overstated the reach of their patents in regulatory filings,” according to Bloomberg Businessweek. Generic pharmaceutical firms argue that the companies behind brand-name drugs can stretch things out in order to keep anyone else from making money on a particular drug.

The case had Detroit-based Caraco and its Mumbai-based parent company, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., taking on Denmark-based Novo about the drug Prandin, which Novo had the exclusive rights to till 2018.

Along with providing a resolution to the case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor also “called on Congress or the FDA to fix a system that forces generic-drug makers to engage in ‘expensive and time-consuming litigation’ to challenge an overly broad use code,” BW adds.

Sotomayor also blamed the FDA for the problems as well and encouraged the agency to take a look at how it handles such situations in the future.

[Image via Shutterstock]