Posted by Michael Wonder on 16 Oct 2018
Drug price transparency won’t end the patent games
17 October 2018 - Just look at Humira, which is keeping its U.S. monopoly as generics hit the European market.
Late last week, Sandoz, the generics division of Novartis, settled a patent lawsuit with AbbVie over Humira, a so-called biologic drug that treats rheumatoid arthritis and just so happens to be the biggest money-maker in all of pharma. With 2017 sales of $18.4 billion, Humira accounts for an astonishing 65% of AbbVie’s revenue.
The settlement will enable Sandoz to bring a generic version — called a biosimilar — to the U.S. market at the beginning of 2023, while paying AbbVie a royalty. This mirrored similar settlements with Mylan, Amgen and Samsung Bioepis that will allow all of them to sell generic Humira at staggered dates in 2023. (A fifth company, Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, is continuing to litigate over the Humira patents.)
