Economist

The Editor The Economist 25 St James's Street London SW1A 1HG U.K.

14 August 2009

Ref: BA.AJH/ 64.636 Dear Sir, In your recent leader column on the pharmaceutical industry, entitled “Something Rotten”, you misrepresent the situation in a number of important areas. Whilst we are concerned about many aspects of the article, there are two major inaccuracies we are feel compelled to correct. First and foremost, the European Commission did not claim that delayed generic entry cost consumers more than €3 billion per year. This figure referred not to a single year but to the period from 2000 until 2007. Even during this time, the savings generated would have amounted to less than one Euro per head of population assuming hypothetical immediate generic entry. To put this into proportion, Europeans spend more than Euro 430 per year per head on pharmaceuticals. Indeed as your article rightly points out, “red tape”, i.e. regulatory hurdles, are a main reason for generic access delays, this is hardly seems worth the fuss. Secondly, you raise once again the misleading concept of innovators filing “hundreds of patents on just one drug to thwart potential generic rivals”. In the absence of a Community patent, companies have no choice but to patent their products on a countryby-country basis. Once the European Patent Office approves a patent application, it immediately translates into 27 national patents. To count these bundles of national patents as separate patents rather than as one patent family grossly distorts the true picture. The Commission found that the top one-third of best-selling medicines are protected by, on average, almost 30 patent families. While we recognise that a leader column is a statement of opinion, a higher level of research and fact-checking would facilitate a more informed debate. We understand that you may need to edit our response. The full text of our letter will be made available via the EFPIA website. Yours faithfully

Brian AGER Director General Fédération Européenne d’Associations et d’Industries Pharmaceutiques

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