Patent Law

The following is excerpted from a December 23, 2009 article by Jim Edwards published at BNET:

Cephalon (CEPH) has hiked the price of Provigil by one third since the introduction of Nuvigil, a similar but newer sleep disorder drug. At the same time, Cephalon has paid competing companies not to market rivals to Provigil.

The company is hoping that when its patent on Provigil expires ? and the drug faces competition from cheap generics ? that Nuvigil will pick up the slack, bolstering revenues.

The Provigil price hike raises another issue: Cephalon?s pay-for-delay deals. Cephalon paid four other companies (Barr, Teva, Mylan and Ranbaxy) to stop manufacturing generic Provigil until 2012.

The two moves ? anticompetition payments followed by rising prices ? would seem to bolster the FTC?s argument that pay-for-delay deals are bad for consumers.

See the blog post and links here.