The Competition Commission has initiated a complaint against pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary company Janssen Pharmaceutica for alleged exclusionary practices and excessive pricing of its drug bedaquiline.
This comes in the wake of Johnson & Johnson earlier this year striking a deal to allow generic versions of its tuberculosis drug to be supplied to low-income countries – but the deal has been criticised for not going far enough to end the company’s monopoly on global supplies of bedaquiline, according to The Guardian.
It reported that the global patent for the drug ended on Tuesday, July 18, but in a number of countries Johnson & Johnson continues to control the market with secondary patents – for which small modifications are made to a product to extend a patent.
J&J’s decision will allow the Stop TB Partnership coalition to procure and supply generic bedaquiline to 44 low- and middle-income countries through its Global Drug Facility (GDF), it reported.
The Commission said in a statement on Friday that it laid the complaint on September 12 and would now investigate Johnson & Johnson and Janssen Pharmaceutica.
“The initiation is based on information in the commission’s possession that gives rise to a reasonable suspicion that the respondents may have engaged in exclusionary practices and excessive pricing in the provision of bedaquiline (trading as Sirturo®), which is a drug used in the treatment of tuberculosis (TB),” it said.
“This conduct may be in possible contravention of sections 8(1)(c) and 8(1)(a) of the act. The matter is currently under investigation and as such, the commission will not be accepting any media engagement in relation thereto, until the matter is finalised,” the commission said.
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