MERCK-ACTIVE INGREDIENTS
PRESS RELEASE
PRESS RELEASE
PHARMACEUTICALS: ANTITRUST OBLIGES MERCK TO LICENSE MANUFACTURE OF THE ANTIBIOTIC IMIPENEM CILASTATINA
The Italian Competition Authority has decided to order an interim measure on Merck & Co. Inc., a company of the pharmaceuticals group Merck.
This decision, based on EU competition law, is the first case where an interim measure has been applied by the Italian Competition Authority.
Merck in Italy has an industrial patent giving it exclusive rights to the sale of a pharmaceutical product (Tienam) based on the active ingredient Imipenem Cilastatina. This is an antibiotic intended for the treatment of particularly serious infections, most often contracted in hospitals. No patent-right over this product is any longer held by Merck in other European countries.
The proceedings against the Merck group were begun on 23 February last, following that group’s refusal to grant a licence for the production in Italy of Imipenem Cilastatina to be exported for the manufacture of generic pharmaceuticals in counties not covered by patents.
Specifically, the Authority’s decision obliges Merck to allow, by granting a licence, the manufacture and warehousing in Italy of the active ingredient Imipenem Cilastatina. This will permit chemicals companies having plants in Italy to be already in a position, at the completion of the proceedings, to export the product in question to European countries where Merck has already lost all patent rights, in advance of the arrival in those markets of generic drugs which will compete with Merck’s Tienam product.
Rome, 21 June 2005