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Brussels - European Union antitrust regulators fined French drugmaker Servier, Israel's Teva and four others a total of €428m ($583m) on Wednesday for blocking cheaper generic medicine.
The sanctions are the third by the European Commission against so-called pay-for-delay deals in the pharmaceutical industry, where brand-name drugmakers pay cheaper non-brand generics firms to hold back from launching rival medicines.
"Servier had a strategy to systematically buy out any competitive threats to make sure that they stayed out of the market. Such behaviour is clearly anti-competitive and abusive," European competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in a statement.
The EU antitrust watchdog said Servier's deals with the generics rivals were aimed at protecting its best-selling blood pressure medicine perindopril from competition in the 28-country bloc.
Servier, France's second-largest drugmaker, was hit with the biggest fine at €331m, while world No. 1 generic drugmaker Teva's penalty came to €15.57m.
The other penalised companies were Unichem and its subsidiary Niche, as well as Matrix, which is now known as Mylan Laboratories, Slovenian peer Krka and Lupin.
