Yangtze River sued three pharmaceutical companies, claiming 100 million yuan!

Claim 100 million Recently, a lawsuit caused by API has attracted the attention of the pharmaceutical circle On September 29, Nanjing Intermediate People's court held a public trial on a monopoly dispute There are still live videos of the trial on the China open trial website In this case, Yangzijiang Pharmaceutical Group (hereinafter referred to as Yangzijiang) and its wholly-owned subsidiary Guangzhou Hairui Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd (hereinafter referred to as Guangzhou Hairui) were the plaintiffs Hefei medical industry pharmaceutical Co., Ltd (hereinafter referred to as Hefei medical industry), Hefei Enright Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd (hereinafter referred to as Enright), Nanjing Haichen Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd (hereinafter referred to as Haicheng) Chen pharmaceutical) as the defendant From the official website of Hefei medical industry, it is mainly a high-tech R & D enterprise, and Enright is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company, mainly engaged in the production and pilot test of medeciloratadine The plaintiff claimed that the defendant abused the dominant market position and requested the court to order the defendant to stop the infringement and compensate the plaintiff for the economic loss of 100 million yuan and 500000 yuan of reasonable expenses The live broadcast of the trial didn't disclose all the details of the case, but the downstream industry was restricted by the supply of APIs, and the story of counterattack had been vaguely formed when obtaining or about to obtain the approval of APIs No one can decide who is right or who is wrong before the court makes a decision, but the secret war between industrial enterprises and API enterprises revealed by the incident may not be rare The varieties involved in the case are more than 1 billion varieties in annual sales The core product involved in the case is medloratadine According to the public information, the product is mainly used to quickly relieve the symptoms related to allergic rhinitis (allergic rhinitis) According to the official website of the drug administration, at present, only one manufacturer of the product has the approval for the API, and two manufacturers have the approval for the product The plaintiff, Guangzhou Hairui, has the approval documents for tablets and Enright has the approval documents for APIs and capsules According to the statistical data released by minenet in 2019, in the top 10 ranking of respiratory systematization drugs, Guangzhou hailui's medloratadine ranked No 82017, with a sales volume of more than 1.4 billion in 2017 and more than 1.1 billion in November 2018 Top 10 brands of respiratory system chemicals in public hospitals in key cities (source: minenet) According to the official website of Hefei medical industry, the antiallergic drug medecaloratadine has an independent invention patent, which was launched in 2009 Due to its significant clinical advantages, it has been recognized by clinicians and patients rapidly Since 2013, it has been ranked first in the sales of antiallergic drugs in China for many years, with a cumulative sales volume of more than 5 billion According to the live broadcast replay of the court trial of Nanjing Intermediate Court, the reasons for the prosecution summarized by Yangzi River can be summed up into four (according to the live broadcast, if there is any inaccuracy, please refer to criticism and correction): 1： Hefei Medical Engineering Co., Ltd and Enright carried out a limited transaction In September 2017, Yangzi River was required to sign a long-term purchase and sale contract with them and agreed on a large amount of liquidated damages Yangzi River could only purchase APIs from them, and the limited purchase time was up to five years 2： There's no good reason to tie-in related products Medeciloratadine is the API, but Yangzi River is required to pay for the patent license 3： The API was sold at a high price Under the condition that the API involved in the case has been declining year by year, Hefei medical engineering and Enright have continuously increased the API price by more than three times The price has been raised from 156 thousand / kg to 48 thousand / kg At the end of 2018, it is required to increase to 60000 yuan, which is significantly higher than the industry average level 4： Yangzi River entrusted Hefei medical engineering company with the R & D of ceftazidime hydrochloride The latter informed that it could not complete the R & D of the project At the same time, the R & D project was suspended and 10 million yuan was lost In addition to the 10 million R & D losses, Yangzi River claims 100 million compensation The other 90 million losses are calculated by Yangzi River according to the gross profit level of the same API company, and the profit loss during the contract period due to the continuous price increase Hefei medical industry, Enright and Haichen pharmaceutical responded to Hefei medical industry's response, saying that because the dispute only involves between companies, and the sales price of medeciloratadine has been declining, which does not harm the social and public interests, it is not suitable for the anti monopoly law, but applicable to civil law, and should be judged according to civil law In addition, medloratadine obtained the 998 patent, so the product is an exclusive market due to patent, not an exclusive market due to monopoly At the same time, loratadine is the pillar product of Hefei medical industry Yangtze River has always been in a strong position in cooperation, and has been under constant pressure by stopping procurement, initiating litigation, requesting patent invalidation, etc As for the continuous price increase, Hefei medical industry group said that it was because Yangzijiang group obtained benefits in the process of cooperation with the defendant, so it reflected the patent value with the supplementary agreement to continue to support Hefei medical industry in the research and development of new drugs The agreement was explained in black and white, and there was no mandatory problem As for Yangzi River's reference to tying patent, Hefei medical engineering did not agree and collect the fees for patent licensing, but a technology royalty In order to reflect the contribution and value of technology, the technology royalty was collected As for the suspension of ceftazidime hydrochloride R & D, the reason is that after the reform of the national drug approval system, Yangzijiang judged that it could not be approved under the new policy, and found reasons to suspend the agreement Hefei medical workers are the interested party, only let Yangzijiang pay half of the cost In the court debate, Hefei medical industry also said that it was a competitive behavior for Yangzi River to obtain the approval of medloratadine API soon The loss calculation is also based on the cost of the wholly-owned subsidiary of Yangtze River, which is not appropriate Hai Ruite's speech was very simple and particularly aggrieved According to the company, the cooperation with Yangzi River lasted from 2006 to 2016 It has been two and a half years since the end of the cooperation The cooperation period has been very stable Nearly three years since the end of the cooperation, it has been involved I don't know why we are suing now In response to this, Yangzijiang added that the 998 patent is a compound patent rather than a API patent, and the API is not within the scope of the patent protection The reason for the exclusive market share is that the API must have a production approval, only Enrui's unique production approval, so no matter the technology transfer fee or the technology royalty, it has to be purchased As for why the lawsuit is filed now, the reason is that the Yangtze River is about to have the capacity of API production, so it dare to file a lawsuit, and was afraid of being cut off This concludes the open court debate.