Six months after Walgreens and three other retailers brought an antitrust lawsuit against Takeda and TWi Pharmaceuticals over an alleged “reverse payment” scheme, CVS has filed a similar antitrust complaint against the same drug companies.
The CVS lawsuit claims that the generic drug maker TWi took payment from Takeda to delay the entrance of its cheaper knockoff version of the Japanese pharma's heartburn drug Dexilant.
TWi reached a settlement with Takeda 10 years ago, which delayed the entry of its Dexilant generic into the U.S. market until January 2022. In the lawsuit, CVS said that based on applicable patent expirations, TWi could have reached the market in June 2020.
The arrangement also allowed the Japanese pharma giant and Taiwan-based TWi to avoid competition from other generic drug makers even after Takeda’s patent protection for Dexilant had expired, according to the lawsuit.
Like the other retailers, CVS called the deal a “reverse payment" agreement in which Takeda paid TWi to keep its generic off the market. Such settlements are often referred to as "pay-for-delay" agreements.
CVS alleges that the companies’ collusion increased its expenses in purchasing Dexilant for sales to its customers. In the March lawsuit, Walgreens made the same argument, joined by other retailers Kroger, Albertsons and H-E-B.
The CVS lawsuit also names TWi's new parent company, Bora Pharmaceuticals, and Upsher-Smith Laboratories, another Bora subsidiary that merged with and succeeded TWi. Bora acquired TWi in 2022 and Upsher-Smith Laboratories in 2024.
Both antitrust lawsuits were filed in federal court in the Northern District of California.
This is at least the second time in two years that CVS has brought an antitrust complaint against Takeda. In January 2024, the healthcare giant filed a similar lawsuit, which claimed the Tokyo drugmaker illegally kept generic versions of its constipation drug Amitiza off the market for several years.