Brand-name generic deals face end of the line: congress likely to ban exclusion payments.

opening the market early for consumers and for funding the expensive lawsuit. Yet Cobalt, which had agreed to delay consumer access to the generic brand by abandoning its effort to knock out what proved to be a patent that never should have been issued in the first place, was able to “double-dip.” Cobalt was able to keep the money it was paid by the brand-name drug company to abandon the patent fight, and then it benefited from having the only generic brand on the market during the exclusivity period. Bernard Sherman, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Apotex Inc., a major manufacturer of generics that supports the Waxman bill, says: