According to Philly.com, YES it is. Duh!
But let's review the stats once again. Four of the top 5 selling US drugs in 2009 will see their patents expire in 2011 or 2012
- Pfizer's $7.5 B Lipitor
- Bristol-Myers Squibb $5.6 B Plavix
- GSK's $4.7 B Advair Diskus
- AstraZeneca's $4.2 B Seroquel
States a report by Bernstein Research prepared in December 2009, 9 out of the top 10 drugs in the world will lose patent protection in the next 5 years, as will 18 of the top 20. Patents expirations will occur on drugs that accounted for $92 M of the world's roughly $300 M in pharmaceutical sales in 2009 according to IMS Health.
As mentioned here many times before (see posts on R&D changes, Business Models, and Innovation), most of pharma is proceeding lemming like to adopt the same changes to battle patent losses. These include:
- Cost cutting - i.e. headcount reduction
- Diversifying into nonprescripotion drugs
- Diversifying into animal health
- Expanding into so-called pharmerging markets - especially into BRIC countries
The cliff is coming and the response so far has been uninspiring.
I think the one with the inner-tube is Roche.
Posted by Bruce Lehr November 13th 2010.
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