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news.The US Supreme Court has said it will not review a lawsuit alleging that two drug firms colluded to monopolize the market for tamoxifen, a breast cancer drug.
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The charge against the companies, Barr and AstraZeneca, is that they conspired to keep the price of tamoxifen high. With Barr Laboratories being the only distributor of the generic form of tamoxifen, the consumers who filed the suit said the companies' agreement insulated them from generic competition, and was a violation of federal law.
In 1992, a district court ruled that AstraZeneca's patent for tamoxifen was invalid. This came as a result of a dispute between AstraZeneca and Barr Laboratories, which wanted to market a generic form of the drug.
Despite its successful challenge, Barr agreed not to manufacture and market its own generic tamoxifen until the expiration of Zeneca's patent, in exchange for $21 million payment and AstraZeneca-manufactured generic tamoxifen for resale in the US.
Barr distributed the unbranded tamoxifen at a price only 5% less than Zeneca's Nolvadex brand. The consumers' suit alleged that generic drugs are usually priced 30% to 80% below brand-name versions.
The court's ruling, however, affirmed that the patent litigation settlement agreement between Barr and AstraZeneca did not violate federal antitrust statutes or the antitrust and/or consumer protection statutes of various states.