European Commission opens formal antitrust investigation of AstraZeneca

Nordic Business Report, July 31, 2003

NORDIC BUSINESS REPORT-31 July 2003-European Commission opens formal antitrust investigation of AstraZeneca(C)1994-2003 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD http://www.m2.com

The European Commission said today (31 July) that preliminary findings suggested that the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca could have misused the patent system and other regulatory procedures for the marketing of its product Losec.

The Commission's "Statement of Objections" marks the opening of a formal antitrust investigation.

The suspected abuse involves alleged misrepresentations by AstraZeneca before national patent offices in order to obtain supplementary protection certificates for Losec and alleged misuse of rules and procedures applied by the national medicines agencies.

"The Commission believes that both practices were intended to block or delay access to the market for generic versions of Losec and that the second practice was also intended to prevent parallel imports of Losec capsules," the European Commission said.

In a statement AstraZeneca today refuted the European Commission's preliminary findings.

"AstraZeneca intends to respond to the statement and the company vigorously refutes any wrongdoing. In particular AstraZeneca will deny that it made misrepresentations before national patent offices or that it misused the rules and procedures applied by national medicines agencies," AstraZeneca said.

AstraZeneca added that the process initiated by the European Commission could take several years and that it did not believe the issue would result in material exposure for the group.

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