Category Archives: Legal

Patients Want to Talk. Do You?

By Julian Upton | Published: August 18, 2010
Why are companies rushing to the web when traditional engagement with patient groups remains so under-exploited, asks Jacky Law. It used to be so easy. Patients listened to doctors, doctors listened to pharma and everyone was happy. There was even a time when payers listened to pharma, reimbursing their prices with very few questions asked. Now [...]
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Mass Gift Ban Repeal Efforts Fizzle

By Reid Paul | Published: August 4, 2010
An effort in the Massachusetts legislature to repeal the state’s ban on many gifts to healthcare providers has failed. The year-old ban is considered one of the most restrictive in the country, banning restaurant meals, various gifts and requiring reporting on transfers of value above $50. “This repeal effort was started by legislators concerned that the [...]
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Avandia on Trial

By Walter Armstrong | Published: July 12, 2010
The mid-July FDA advisory committee meeting to decide the fate of GlaxoSmithKline’s Avandia (rosiglitazone) is widely viewed as a test case of how the agency’s new leadership will address controversial drugs with serious risks but confusing data. A request that GSK yank its diabetes blockbuster—three years after first being associated with an increased risk of [...]
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AZ Celebrates Crestor Patent Win

By George Koroneos | Published: June 30, 2010
The US District Court in Delaware upheld AstraZeneca’s patent for its blockbuster statin Crestor (rosuvastatin), ending a dispute that could have crippled the drugmaker’s billion-dollar cash cow. Crestor’s patent is not scheduled to expire until 2016. However, a group of generics firms had claimed that a substance patent (314) protecting one of the active ingredients in [...]
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Government Crackdown on the C-Suite

By Walter Armstrong | Published: June 2, 2010
Over the past decade, the drug industry has paid tens of billions of dollars to settle state and federal lawsuits involving the False Claims Act—defrauding Medicare and Medicaid, promoting drugs for unapproved uses, paying kickbacks to doctors and pharmacies, and the like. Stories about off-label promotion of drugs with serious adverse effects and no proven [...]
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