Aly and Wallace Join Biosimilars Podcast on “Pay-for-Delay”

Partners Imron Aly and Joel Wallace joined the podcast “Not So Different” to discuss “pay-for-delay” issues with a focus on whether these kinds of settlements are the cause of delayed generic and biosimilar competition.

Imron proposed that “pay-for-delay” is a catchy misnomer

“The catchphrase I want to get out is ‘pay-for-certainty’,” he said.  “When there is a settlement around the patent landscape, that is not just a ‘pay-for-delay,’ it is also, hand-in-hand, a ‘pay-for-certainty.’ What I mean by that is that a generic company will get a date certain, before the patents expire, in order to launch a generic product. And that’s good for the industry and the public.”

Joel explained how, when creating these settlements, companies agree to let the generic product launch before the patent expires, bringing the product into the market sooner and creating a net-positive for consumers.  

“If you have certainty, if you know that you’re able to launch a generic product in three or four years,” he said. “The brands also know that. They end up bringing their prices down as you get closer and closer to that launch because they’re going to have to be competing with the generic.”

He added that since the generic companies won’t have to turn to litigation to get their products out, they can reinvest into additional generic products.

Listen to the full podcast here.