Those settlements protect $9 billion in drug sales from generic competition. "That's almost an epidemic," he told lawmakers, "and left untreated, these types of settlements will continue to insulate more and more drugs from competition."
The FTC joined the Cephalon antitrust litigation on February 13, 2008, by
filing a lawsuit against Cephalon, but not the generics makers, alleging
violations of the Federal Trade Commission Act. Cephalon's anticompetitive
scheme "denies patients access to lower-cost, generic versions of Provigil
and forces consumers and other purchasers to pay hundreds of millions of dollars
a year more for Provigil," the agency stated in a press release the same
day.
On March 29, 2010, a federal judge in Philadelphia denied a defense motion to dismiss the FTC's case (and related cases) against Cephalon. The case is now in the discovery phase, according to the FTC. However, nobody better look for a resolution and cheap generic Provigil anytime soon because Cephalon has every intention of dragging out this litigation as long as possible and is geared up for round two of delay and motion filing.
In a May 4, 2010 Earnings Call, George Pappert, the former champion of lower drug prices for citizens of Pennsylvania, informed listeners that the discovery process "will take us to roughly the middle of 2011."
"And then we will be filing our dispositive motions, our motions for summary judgment," he said. "I believe the court has a schedule set for July of 2011, and then the court will consider those motions at that time."
Being the first batch of motions took years to resolve, generic Provigil will likely enter the market in 2012, exactly as specified in the pay-for-delay deals, and long before the litigation ends. Providing the drug is still allowed to be sold at all that is.
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