Legal ways of unfair competition

Not long ago CJSC Roche Moscow filed a complaint with the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service alleging that CJSC BIOCAD might have violated the advertising law. In their complaint Roche Moscow said that CJSC BIOCAD web-site http://algeron.ru. contains advertisement of chronic Hepatitis C drug Algeron that can be found and seen by anyone, including patients.

In response, the Head of BIOCAD’s Legal Department, Ms. Galina Sekareva stated that information that can be found on www.algeron.ru is meant exclusively for employees of medical centers and pharmaceutical companies. Access is gained by observing the following procedure: the web-site visitor may be authorized to view the web-site contents only after he or she has confirmed oneself as a doctor or medical specialist, having middle or higher medical education, by pressing the corresponding button.

In addition, the information provided in the site contains product’s specifications, its origin, dosage forms, and inventory, prices and other information important to consumers, posted on the producing company’s official website. Such information by Russian law is not considered advertising.

It is also worth drawing attention to the fact that a direct competitor of Algeron, a Hoffmann-La Roche chronic Hepatitis C drug, has its own website. Its pages contain information about the drug, which by its nature is identical to the information from the site http://algeron.ru. Thus, the motives of Roche’s allegations of BIOCAD’s misconducts remain quite unclear. One of the possible reasons might be Algeron, since entering the market this summer, has been posing threat and increasing competition steadily by gaining greater and greater market share.

After finding no violation of the advertising law, January 21st, 2014 the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service rejected the complaint.

Algeron - innovative drug pegylated interferon alpha with the original structure and proven efficacy in the treatment of chronic hepatitis C. The results of the clinical studies show the effectiveness of Algeron® in suppressing viral replication of hepatitis C, without compromising on the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamics properties that are comparable to PegIntron®, the drug that is recognized as standard treatment of hepatitis C.