The High Court of Cassation and Justice definitively confirmed the violation of the Competition Law by Roche Romania SRL, which abused its dominant position on the market of oncological products in Romania.
In 2019, the competition authority sanctioned the pharmaceutical company Roche Romania SRL with fines totaling 44.168 million lei (9.47 million euros) for adopting a strategy aimed at eliminating competition in public tenders for medicines containing rituximab, trastuzumab, with the aim of delaying the market entry of biosimilar medicines.
Thus, Roche sold the medicines containing Rituximab and Trastuzumab to the partner distributors, who were also its competitors in the auctions, but the price offered to them was higher than its bid price in the public auctions. In this way, Roche eliminated its competition in the tenders, because the distributors could not participate in these procedures under reasonable conditions that would ensure their activity in an efficient (profitable) manner.
Roche contested the sanctioning decision, but both the first instance (the Bucharest Court of Appeal) and the High Court of Cassation and Justice rejected the pharmaceutical company’s action as unfounded.
Roche was also sanctioned because, in the same period, 2017-2019, it implemented a strategy to prevent the sales of competing, cheaper drugs that contain the active substance Erlotinib. Roche’s strategy included directing patients to its own, more expensive product, Tarceva, through the Roche patient card and the Roche call center, and covering the price difference that would have had to be paid by patients when purchasing Tarceva, in order for them to do not buy another similar drug.
And in this case, Roche appealed to the Bucharest Court of Appeal, but the court upheld the decision of the Competition Council. The company appealed to the High Court of Cassation and Justice.