28 pharma companies in USA entered potential pay-for-delay deals in FY 2011, says new FTC report

In the 2011 fiscal year (12 months to September 30) pharmaceutical companies in the USA continued a recent anticompetitive trend of paying potential generic rivals to delay the introduction of lower-cost prescription drug alternatives for American consumers, according to an overview of industry data released yesterday by the staff of the US Federal Trade Commission, the competition agency whose chairman has been fiercely critical of the so called “pay-for-delay” deals.

The FTC staff report found that drug companies entered into 28 potential pay-for-delay deals in FY 2011. The figure nearly matches last year’s record of 31 deals and is higher than any other previous year since the FTC began collecting data in 2003. Overall, the agreements reached in the latest fiscal year involved 25 different brand-name pharmaceutical products with combined annual US sales of more than $9 billion.

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