UPDATE: Raids on major drugmakers as EU Commission starts pharma sector inquiry with unannounced inspections

The offices of several leading global pharmaceutical companies were raided by European Commission officials, starting on January 15, in a move intended to discover whether anti-competitive practices had been employed to prevent or delay generic copy medicines entering the European market. The premises on which they swooped included those of US firms Pfizer, Merck & Co and Johnson & Johnson, UK-based GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca and France's Sanofi-Aventis, as well generic drugmakers Sandoz (part of the Swiss Novartis group), and Israeli giant Teva Pharmaceutical Industries.

The investigation followed indications that competition in pharmaceutical markets in the European Union may not be working well: fewer new medicines are being brought to market, and the entry of generic drugs sometimes seems to be delayed, noted the EC.

The inquiry will therefore look at the reasons for this. In particular, it will examine whether pharmaceutical companies, such as in settlements of patent disputes, may infringe the EC Treaty's prohibition on restrictive business practices (Article 81). It will also look into whether companies may have created artificial barriers to entry, whether through the misuse of patent rights, "vexatious litigation" or other means, and whether such practices may infringe the EC Treaty's ban on abuses of dominant market positions (Article 82). Vigorous competition in this sector is crucial for the public, as it ensures both access by patients to state-of-the-art medicines, and value for money for health spending by individuals, private health schemes and government health services in Europe.