Explore the website

Subscribe to our newsletter and never miss a post!

* indicates required

Medicines Law & Policy will use the information you provide to keep you up-to-date when we post new research and insight. You can change your mind about receiving our newsletter any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in the footer of any email you receive from us. We will treat your information with respect. By clicking below, you agree that we may process your information in accordance with these terms.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.

Explore the website

Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Dutch Court Orders AstraZeneca to Pay Damages in Patent Evergreening Case

Today the Dutch court made a long-awaited ruling in the patent evergreening case of health insurance company Menzis versus AstraZeneca. It found that AstraZeneca has unjustly enriched itself at the expense of the health insurance company Menzis and its clients. The court orders AstraZeneca to compensate a claim for damages. The damages were incurred by the insurance company and its clients because of the high price of the medicine that AstraZeneca artificially maintained through enforcing a weak patent on a slow-release version of a known product. The total amount of damages payable still needs to be determined.

Menzis took AstraZeneca to court in 2018 over the pricing of Seroquel, a medicine used for the treatment of psychosis. Menzis asserted that AstraZeneca abused its position in the market and maintained, unnecessarily, a high price for the product through evergreening of its patents. “Evergreening” refers to the practice of extending a market monopoly while creating limited public benefit, usually through seeking secondary and follow-on patents related to minor changes to an existing product. In this case, AstraZeneca applied for a patent on an extended-release formulation of the product. The patent on the immediate release formulation expired in 2012. A British court ruled the patent on the new formulation invalid in 2012. Nevertheless, the company continued to take legal action against generic competitors in the Netherlands. The Dutch court declared the patent on the extended-release product invalid for lack of inventive step in June 2014. This decision opened up the market for generic producers and led to a price drop from € 3,16 to € 0,37 per pill. But this meant that during the period AstraZeneca enforced the weak patent the monopoly price still had to be paid because competitors could not offer their products.

Menzis claimed € 4.1 million in damages from AstraZeneca for unlawfully maintaining a monopoly position in the market. The insurance company argued that AstraZeneca could have known that its patent would not stand up to scrutiny but nevertheless used it to maintain its sole market position and to charge the high price. The Dutch court agreed and ordered AstraZeneca to pay damages, the exact amount is still to be determined.

AstraZeneca has the option to appeal this ruling.

Evergreening of patents and other market exclusivities is core to drug companies strategies to maintain a market monopoly and keep generic competitors off the market. Civil society organisations the globe over are challenging this practice, for example in India, France, Brazil, the US and Switzerland. But for a health insurer to take on a pharmaceutical company’s evergreening practice is new.

 

Avatar photo
+ posts

Ellen ‘t Hoen, LLM PhD, is a lawyer and public health advocate with over 30 years of experience working on pharmaceutical and intellectual property policies.

Newsletter

Never miss a post! Sign up for ML&P's newsletter.

Recent Articles

FDA approval of injectable lenacapavir for Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) opens the road to ending HIV

On 18th June 2025, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of long-acting antiretroviral medicine lenacapavir (LEN-LA), for the prevention of...

Transfer of technology and know-how for the production of pandemic-related health products in the WHO Pandemic Agreement: The proverbial half glass 

A version of this brief was published on 13 June '25 by the Graduate Institute as part of their 'Governing Pandemic Snapshot' series: https://www.governingpandemics.org/gp-snapshot During...

The People vs. AbbVie

Today, 9 May 2025, is an important day in court for the Dutch Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation (PAF). In February 2023, PAF started a court...

The Pandemic Agreement is here

In December 2021, the member states of the World Health Organization decided “to draft and negotiate a WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument...

Expanding local production is essential for pandemic preparedness. It requires, however, transfer of technology.

Madam co-chairs, delegates,  This very week, from 7 to 9 April the 3rd World Local Production Forum is taking place in Abu Dhabi. Actions towards...

Related Articles