Global drugmakers lose legal battles in Russian pharma market

The Russian antitrust regulator – the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) seems to be losing its legal battles with domestic pharmaceutical companies that launched their generics in the market prior to expiration of patents for original drugs, The Pharma Letter’s local correspondent reorts.

At the end of 2024, the FAS found the local drugmakers - Axelpharm and Akrikhin guilty of unfair competition and ordered the companies to pay 2.6 billion roubles ($306 million) to the state budget (which is equivalent to the volume generics they sold at state auctions). However, most of these decisions have been overturned by Russian courts.

For example, Axelpharm earlier received the order from the FAS after selling its anticancer drug Axitinib for 513 million roubles. This was the FAS' response to an appeal, submitted US giant Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), whose patent for Inlyta - which has the same active ingredient, - expired only at the end of June 2025. This decision was immediately followed by similar ones. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) ordered companies to pay over 1 billion roubles for the launch of generic versions of two original anticancer drugs into the turnover before expiration of patents for original drugs: Pfizer's Bosulif (Axelpharm's version of bosutinib) and Novartis' (NOVN: VX) Jakavi (the generic version of ruxolitinib).