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Biotech / Medical : Sepracor-Looks very promising -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ed Ajootian who wrote (1980)	3/10/1999 12:09:00 AM
From: rkrw	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 10280

<<I disagree with Saks and IMO this is a negative development for SEPR. I believe the FTC could very easily find that this behavior is anti-competitive and force SEPR to deal with companies other than the maker of the parent drug. They will make less money dealing with anyone other than the maker of the parent drug.>> The FTC hasn't done anything. They're investigating, so I'd call it potentially negative. On the flip side, if the FTC does nothing, or can't do anything, wouldn't this be positive in that a precedent would be set? I think its tremendously premature to declare that the FTC could very easily nix this deal. The FDA approves of and encourages chiral switches; plenty of other companies are working on their own chiral switches where they own the patents to their isomers; Prozac is now one of many SSRI's on the market so in the context of the entire market segment, LLY hardly has cornered the market, in fact their market share has been eroding; ICE Prozac will not block the introduction of generics-in fact Mylan is set to introduce the first upon patent expire. I guess we'll have to wait and see what the FTC concludes. Hopefully it won't take too long.

To: Ed Ajootian who wrote (1980)	3/10/1999 8:09:00 AM
From: BMcV	Respond to of 10280

>>I believe the FTC could very easily find that this behavior is anti-competitive and force SEPR to deal with companies other than the maker of the parent drug.<< I just don't see what grounds the FTC could use to find this deal anticompetitive. "This behavior" is simply a licensing agreement, which is standard business practice. The whole point of patents is to provide exclusivity and the whole point of licensing is to make that exclusivity transferable (and so more valuable). How could the FTC decide that in this case that's not allowable? If you follow the laser vision correction industry, you know about the VISX/Summit Tech situation, which on the surface seems analogous, but probably isn't. Those companies set up Pillar Point as a holding entity for their respective patents, which they then licensed back, in effect combining their IP, controlling, then dividing the market. That raised eyebrows at the FTC (I forget if they ruled against the setup, or simply used persuasion), which forced a break-up. But there was the holding entity structure, and both partners basically wanted out anyway, so they didn't fight to keep it. Waxman may not like the effect of SEPR's strategy, but I don't see how anyone can stop it, short of rewriting the legislation. And by the way, it seems to me your suggested remedy, that SEPR license its drugs to all comers, would be unprecedented and contrary to the whole drift of patent law.