European Commission, DG COMP, Pharmaceuticals Sector Inquiry Task Force, Rue Joseph II/Jozef II-straat 70, Brussels, Belgium.
Arch Immunol Ther Exp (Warsz). 2010 Feb;58(1):1-5. doi: 10.1007/s00005-009-0059-0. Epub 2010 Jan 27.
The pharmaceutical sector is a part of today's economy in which the relationship between patents and competition has been receiving increasing attention. The European Commission's inquiry into this sector adds to the ongoing debate. Its Preliminary Report, published in November 2008, explains and quantifies a number of practices adopted by individual companies operating in the sector. The Report focuses on two strands of interplay between pharmaceutical companies. The first focus is on competition between originator and generic companies and the second relates to competition among originators themselves. The Report's observations on the former provide us with some important insights into the potential ways of raising barriers to the timely entry of cheaper, off-patent products, while scrutiny of the latter adds to our understanding of the current rate of introducing new innovative products into the market. The study is completed by a number of observations on the sector's regulatory framework. The presentation below follows the order of findings described in the Report.
制药行业是当今经济的一部分，其中专利和竞争之间的关系一直受到越来越多的关注。欧盟委员会对该行业的调查增加了正在进行的辩论。其 2008 年 11 月发布的初步报告解释并量化了该行业个别公司采用的一些做法。该报告侧重于制药公司之间两种相互作用的关系。第一个重点是原创药公司和仿制药公司之间的竞争，第二个重点是原创药公司之间的竞争。报告对前者的观察结果为我们提供了一些重要的见解，了解了提高及时进入更便宜的非专利产品的障碍的潜在途径，而对后者的审查则增加了我们对当前引入市场的新创新产品的速度的理解。该研究还对该行业的监管框架进行了一些观察。下面的介绍遵循报告中描述的发现顺序。
