generic competition

Yet little attention has been paid to how delays in generic competition are driving up drug costs.

Patents enable drug companies to market their products, free from generic competition, for a set period of time.

For drug companies, patents and the protections that they bring from generic competition are critical.

Much of the problem is attributable to generic competition.

At the same time, the availability of generic competition can mean considerable savings for consumers.

But just the credible threat of generic competition is enough to get manufacturers to lower their prices.

Before the generic competition started, sales had reached more than $1 billion a year, large for a cancer drug.

But the system also encourages generic competition once a patent expires.

They said their estimates were based on conservative assumptions about when specific drugs would be open to generic competition.

Before its first generic competition appeared in 1987, sales were more than $300 million annually.

Prices for medicines can drop as much as 90 percent once they face generic competition.

Large pharmaceutical companies often spend millions of dollars protecting their patents from generic competition.

First, the data protection scheme and generic competition.

Critics say that some companies have delayed generic competition for years by repeatedly seeking 30-month delays.

The patent would protect Fosamax from generic competition until 2018.

The patents on several popular Merck drugs expired in 2000 and 2001, opening them to generic competition.

But in the next two years, some of its biggest-selling drugs will lose patent protection and be opened to generic competition.

Cutthroat generic competition eventually drives down prices by as much as 80 percent.

Biotechnology drugs will still not be subject to generic competition in the same way chemical drugs are.

But one class of drugs, which includes some of the most expensive products in the world, is insulated from such generic competition.

Many companies are currently inexpensive in relation to their earnings forecasts, and generic competition is at its most fierce.

Generic competition often causes precipitous drops in sales of brand-name products.

This would reduce the ability of drug companies to stave off generic competition by securing multiple delays.

The Commission wanted to strike the right balance between innovation and generic competition by adjusting criteria for achieving it.

Because taking the combination would be convenient, the company does not expect its franchise to be undermined by the generic competition.