Wyeth Sued by Bergen County over Effexor
Wyeth, the makers of Effexor, is being sued by a health fund for municipal workers in New Jersey's Bergen County. The manufacturers are being sued amid claims that the generic version of the drug has not been on the shelves in Bergen for the past two years, which allowed Wyeth to overcharge for the brand name drug instead.
The antitrust lawsuit was filed by the Bergen Municipal Employee Benefits Fund last Thursday. Plaintiffs' lawyers are seeking class action status with the U.S. District Court in Trenton. The full complaint is saying that Wyeth used “sham litigation to delay marketing of a generic version of Effexor XR, also known by its generic name, venlafaxine hydrochloride, by 13 other drug companies.”
The complaint also states that Wyeth holds the patent on Effexor, which is FDA-approved, and only was supposed to have the exclusive marketing rights to the drug through June 13, 2008. In filing multiple lawsuits against all of the companies that wanted to start introducing the generic version of Effexor to the market, Wyeth essentially “tagged another two years onto its period of exclusive use.”
On Tuesday, a spokesman for Wyeth, said that while the company knows about the Bergen complaint, it hadn’t yet been given a copy of the document. However, Wyeth officials are still going to dispute the accusations made against the company.
“We categorically deny the claims asserted in the complaint relating to the Effexor XR patents," a company spokesman said. "The company stands behind its Effexor XR portfolio, which represents an important innovation in the treatment of depression and anxiety and has benefited millions of patients across the country. Pfizer intends to defend itself vigorously against the plaintiff’s claims.”
The fund’s lawsuit further claims that the drug company lengthened its monopoly on Effexor by saying that it had a new extended release formula that didn’t have any side effects like the regular version did. Most of the previous lawsuits Wyeth filed against generic manufacturers were settled by the generic companies before the courts could decide whether Wyeth’s new patent claims were merited.
