The Fair Trade Commission is currently investigating unfair colligation activities in the pharmaceutical industry. Domestic and foreign pharmaceutical companies, which have been preparing for long-term vacations after the year-end closing, are making a tentative decision on when to survey.

According to the industry on December 21, the Fair Trade Commission`s Knowledge Industry Surveillance Department conducted a survey on two domestic pharmaceutical companies and two multinational pharmaceutical companies. The survey is said to be related to pay-for-delay, which is considered to be an unfair trade practice in the pharmaceutical industry.

The reverse payment agreement means that the original patented patents provide financial support in exchange for delaying or abandoning the generic manufacturer`s entry into the market. In the case of original pharmaceutical companies, the slower the launch of generic drugs, the more monopolistic the market, the more profitable.

Especially, original drug prices fell 30% after the introduction of generic drugs, but they are reduced to 53.55% one year after generic drugs are released due to the nature of the drug price calculation method in Korea. However, if this happens, it will hurt health insurance finances because cheap generic drugs cannot be released to the market and original drug prices cannot be lowered. The damage is caused by the consumers who have to pay for expensive drugs.

An official of the Korea Federation of Knowledge Industry Surveillance officials said, "If a counter payment agreement is reached, the monopoly period of the original drug companies will be extended, and consumers will not be able to benefit from the drug companies."

Meanwhile, in June, the FTC revealed that it would conduct a large-scale review of the pay-back agreement with 70 drug companies. When the FTC analyzes the data submitted by pharmaceutical companies and judges that there is an illegal act, it conducts a direct investigation. Investigations of domestic and overseas pharmaceutical companies have been made on the basis of this investigation.

By now, the counter-payment settlement in Korea is one of the representative cases of GSK and Dong-A Pharmaceutical, where the FTC scrapped KRW 5.2 billion in FY 2011. GSK, which has a patent on Zangfang, has been caught after providing and providing incentives to prevent the launch of Dongda Pharmaceuticals `Ondoron`. The FTC believes that counterfeit settlement cases have occurred in cases such as when a developer of a copy drug filed a patent lawsuit against an original company for product release and then suddenly withdrew.

An industry expert said, "We filed a patent lawsuit against the original holding company for the release of generic drugs. There have been numerous cases of self-withdrawal for various reasons." "We do not know when a pharmaceutical company will be subject to investigation by the FTC."

By Kim Ji Seob cloud50@


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