Pharma Pay-For-Delay Deals Called ‘Cost of Doing Business’

California settled last year with Teva Pharmaceuticals for $69 million for paying a drugmaker to keep a generic version of the narcolepsy drug Provigil off the market, a much-criticized practice blamed in part for the at-times astronomical cost of some pharmaceuticals.

While California’s attorney general touts it as the biggest state settlement ever reached for so-called pay-for-delay deals, it only accounted for about 6% of the $1.1 billion in revenues reaped by Provigil in 2010. Seemingly low-ball agreements like these are not uncommon, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis of legal settlements from 2013 through 2019.

“It’s incredibly frustrating because ...