EU: Servier’s €331M pay-for-delay appeal goes to court, 3 years later

Three years after receiving a €331 million ($373 million) fine from European antitrust authorities over a pay-for-delay deal on the blood pressure drug perindopril, Servier is fighting in a European court hearing to cut its punishment.

During the first of a four-day hearing on the case, an attorney for Servier argued that competition commissioners were biased in their review and committed legal and procedural mistakes, according to Reuters.

In 2014, European authorities handed out €427.7 million ($482 million) in fines to six companies over pay-for-delay arrangements on the Servier bestseller that delayed competition and hurt consumers. Servier took the biggest hit at €331 million, while Mylan, Teva, Lupin, Krka and Unichem were also involved.

At the time of the fine, authorities said the companies conducted numerous deals to protect perindopril from generic competition. A lawyer for the government maintained this week that the reviewers looked at the case in a “neutral manner,” according to the news service.

Servier’s hearing comes shortly after the EU’s competition authority announced a probe into cancer-drug pricing from South Africa’s Aspen Pharmacare. In that effort, the government is hoping to learn whether Aspen “abused a dominant market position in breach of EU antitrust rules.”

Full Content: Reuters

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