PharmaTelevision - Bird & Bird: A View of Competition Law in the Pharmaceutical Industry

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Video title: Bird & Bird: A View of Competition Law in the Pharmaceutical Industry

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In this interview for PTV, Fintan Walton talks to Richard Eccles, Partner at the international law firm Bird & Bird, on the contents of the report entitled ‘Competition Law and Intellectual Property Strategy in the Pharmaceuticals Sector’, written by Richard and his colleague Gerry Kamstra, of Bird & Bird. This major new report is a co-publication between PharmaVentures and Bird & Bird.

In the interview Richard explains the importance of understanding competition law, and how these operate across the EU. Pricing and regulatory issues are discussed in-depth, and Richard comments on the changing levels of complexity of regulatory laws. He also gives a summary on generic companies’ stance within competition law. Richard illustrates these points using specific cases involving GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca.

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Importance of competition law.

Fintan Walton:

Hello and welcome to PharmaVentures Business Review here in London. On this show I have Richard Eccles, who is a Partner at Bird & Birdand you head up the international competition practice within Bird & Bird, welcome to the show.

Richard Eccles:

Thank you.

Fintan Walton:

Richard Eccles, you have been involved in writing a report which is about to be published by PharmaVentures which has been written by you and your colleagues at Bird & Bird on the whole area of competition law. Competition law in the context of the pharmaceutical industry why do you end up writing a report about this?

Richard Eccles:

I think the pharmaceutical industry represents a lot of challenges and it's very fertile grant to competition lawyers and also intellectual property lawyers because of the interplay between competition law, intellectual property and regulation. The conflict in policies the need to protect and safeguard innovation to encourage investment in new drugs that health service need that the consumers need and the medical world needs and the desire also to achieve drugs at favorable prices, prices that are not too high and therefore there is a conflict attention between protecting the innovative research and development based companies and the generic companies and the parallel importers. And we have different systems of regulation at play the medicines authorization regulatory framework and system with intellectual property rights and supplementary patent protections certificates and the whole system of competition law and they all interplay and it's shown to be an area of lot of activity of competition regulators and also in litigation.

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Richard Eccles

Partner

Richard Eccles qualified as a solicitor in 1985 and is a Partner in Bird & Bird's Competition Law Group. He is experienced in all aspects of EC and UK competition law (and merger control), including competition regulation of network industries, EC (and UK) competition rules on undertakings granted special or exclusive rights by the state, and the EC state aid rules. He has advised extensively on the competition regulation of network industries and liberalized utilities and also has particular experience inter alia in the life sciences and oil and gas sectors. Richard Eccles is included in the rankings of leading competition lawyers in all the top legal directories. He is a frequently published author on competition law and regulatory subjects. He regularly speaks at conferences and is Chairman of The Law Society's European Group. Richard Eccles is the lead author of the PharmaVentures Report, 'Competition Law and Intellectual Property Strategy in the Pharmaceuticals Sector'.

Bird & Bird

Bird & Bird is an international commercial law firm which operates on the basis of an in-depth understanding of key industry sectors. The firm focuses on aviation and aerospace, financial services, communications, e-commerce, IT, life sciences, media and sport. The firm operates offices in Beijing, Brussels, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, The Hague, Hong Kong, London, Lyon, Madrid, Milan, Munich, Paris, Rome and Stockholm, and has close ties with firms in other key centres in Europe, Asia and the United States.