AIDS Patients Sue Abbott Laboratories for Violating Antitrust Laws With Five-Fold Price Hike of Key Anti-HIV Drug Norvir.

Business Editors/Health/Medical Writers

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 19, 2004

Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT) took advantage of a monopoly of an essential anti-HIV drug to illegally overcharge tens of thousands of AIDS patients, according to a federal antitrust lawsuit filed today.

Two AIDS patients brought the class-action lawsuit on behalf of all U.S. consumers who bought the drug, Norvir, since Abbott quintupled its price in December 2003.

Norvir is the only drug that can safely boost the efficacy of a powerful class of anti-AIDS drugs called protease inhibitors. By raising the price of Norvir, Abbott added thousands of dollars a year to the cost of its competitors' protease inhibitor regimens. At the same time, Abbott maintained the same price for its own Norvir-boosted treatment, in an attempt to price its competitors out of the marketplace.

The law firm of Berman DeValerio Pease Tabacco Burt & Pucillo filed the complaint in U.S. District Court for Northern California. The lawsuit seeks damages and an injunction against Abbott for unlawfully leveraging its monopoly in the market for boosters of protease inhibitors.

"It's one thing for a pharmaceutical company to make money, but Abbott's unjustified price increase has taken unfair advantage of the very people it should be trying to help," said Joseph J. Tabacco, Jr., the attorney overseeing the lawsuit for Berman DeValerio.

"What makes this particularly outrageous is that Abbott depended on U.S. government grants to develop Norvir. Even without the price hike, the company was on track to generate total sales of more than $3 billion on the drug - 180 times its original investment," Tabacco said.

Protease inhibitors are the most powerful weapons to date against HIV. They work by blocking the action of protease, an enzyme needed for HIV to reproduce and infect other cells. But they have major side effects and cannot be used for long periods of time.

For those reasons, doctors who want to boost the benefits of protease inhibitors while minimizing their potentially dangerous side effects include Norvir in the regimens of patients on these drugs. All but one of the eight protease inhibitors mentioned in the lawsuit depend on Norvir as a booster.

On December 3, 2003, Abbott raised the wholesale price of Norvir from $205.74 to $1,028.71 for 120 100 mg capsules - an increase of some 478 percent. At the same time, Abbott did not raise the price of its own Norvir-boosted protease inhibitor, Kaletra.

Abbott's staggering price hike drastically raised the cost of competitors' Norvir-dependent drug regimens, the lawsuit says. For example, the cost of Lexiva, which requires twice-daily doses of Norvir, increased $6,258 per year. For Tipranovir, a protease inhibitor currently in development by Boehringer-Ingleheim, the cost of the optimal Norvir booster dose would increase by more than $12,000 per year.

Because Abbott did not raise the price of the Norvir used with its own protease inhibitor, Kaletra became the least expensive boosted protease inhibitor regimen on the market.

The two plaintiffs named in the complaint seek to represent a nationwide class of consumers and end payers who have been forced to pay for Norvir since the price hike. To obtain a copy of the filed complaint, you may contact the firm's San Francisco office at [phone].

Berman DeValerio Pease Tabacco Burt & Pucillo prosecutes class actions nationwide on behalf of institutions and individuals, chiefly victims of antitrust law violations, securities fraud and consumer fraud. The firm consists of 34 attorneys in Boston, San Francisco and West Palm Beach, Florida.