Healthcare

GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis have made another admission in a case brought by the ACCC alleging the drug giants made misleading claims in marketing their Voltaren Osteo Gel and Voltaren Emulgel pain relief products.

Reckitt Benckiser has filed an appeal against GlaxoSmithKline, after a judge found the consumer goods giant misled consumers with claims that Nurofen was a more effective pain killer than its rival’s Panadol and ordered it to pay all of GlaxoSmithKline’s legal bill.

Pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and Generic Health have laid down their swords in a long-running patent dispute over AstraZeneca’s cholesterol drug Crestor, two-and-a-half years after the High Court of Australia found the patent obvious and invalid.

Reckitt Benckiser has been ordered to pay all of GlaxoSmithKline’s legal bill after a judge found the drug giant misled consumers with claims that Nurofen was a more effective pain killer than its rival’s Panadol.

IP Australia handed a win Thursday to a company challenging a Bayer animal drug patent, but gave Bayer an additional two months to address its concerns about the patent application’s deficiencies.

The Australian Patent Office has shot down a patent application covering throat lozenges by consumer goods giant Reckitt-Benckiser on a challenge by rival Sanofi-Aventis.

Drug giants GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis have conceded part of the ACCC’s case that packaging on their Voltaren Osteo Gel breached the Australian Consumer Law, but said the label was changed almost a year ago.

The judge who sided with Medibank in the ACCC’s failed case last year paid little attention to one of the consumer regulator’s central arguments against the private health insurer, a court heard Monday.

In the first criminal prosecution of its kind against an Australian corporation, prosecutors on Thursday charged a Victorian health care company and its managing director over an alleged wheelchair cartel.

Medibank CEO Craig Drummond said Monday the private health insurer was “disappointed” that the ACCC was appealing its loss in a consumer case accusing the insurer of unconscionable conduct in advising members about coverage limits.