AstraZeneca Loses Court Appeal, Has Cartel Fine Cut
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The European Union’s second-highest court upheld a ruling that AstraZeneca Plc misled patent officials and flouted antitrust rules to keep a generic competitor off the market, while reducing the associated fine against the company.
The EU’s General Court today cut the company’s fine from 60 million euros ($74 million) to 52.5 million euros. The court upheld the decision by the region’s antitrust regulator that AstraZeneca, the U.K.’s second-largest drugmaker, had “abused its dominant position by preventing the marketing of generic products” of its Prilosec heartburn medicine.