2009: 8% of products going off patent

The consultancy firm Deloitte estimates that $55 billion of products (around 8% of the total pharmaceutical market) will go off patent in 2009. To make matters worse, pharma companies have to continuously defend the patents of their key drugs in costly legal battles. As generics firms evolve from simple copycats into innovators in their own right, they are vigorously challenging patents. One of the ways big pharma companies are fighting back is by launching their own authorized generics. The research company Cutting Edge Information found that a third of them had launched such products between 2005 and 2007. That number will grow to 44% between 2008 and 2010.
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