European court rules Teva, Cephalon must pay $60M fine for reverse payment scheme after failed appeal

Te­va and its sub­sidiary Cephalon’s hopes that a Eu­ro­pean court would dis­miss or re­duce more than $60 mil­lion in fines have been dashed af­ter the court ruled against it yes­ter­day in a case that ac­cused the com­pa­nies of con­spir­ing in a pay-for-de­lay scheme.

Back in 1997, Cephalon start­ed sell­ing its sleep dis­or­der drug Provig­il (modafinil) in the UK and then sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries by 2005. As patents for the drug were about to ex­pire, Cephalon cre­at­ed a sec­ond gen­er­a­tion drug called Nu­vig­il with plans to cre­ate an­oth­er called Spar­lon, both based on the ac­tive in­gre­di­ent modafinil.

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