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21 July 2017Americas

Abbott settles grey market goods dispute with pharmacy

Abbott Laboratories has settled its dispute with a Florida-based pharmacy accused of selling grey market goods.

The healthcare company sued the pharmacy, Physician’s Choice Pharmacy, along with other pharmacies and wholesalers, in October 2015 at the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

According to the claim, the pharmacy had sold international test strips, used to monitor blood glucose levels, that had not been cleared by regulators for sale in the US.

Abbott sells ‘FreeStyle’ and ‘FreeStyle Lite’ blood glucose test strips, which are used by diabetics.

It owns US trademark number 3,111,863 for the ‘FreeStyle’ trademark, number 3,488,499 for the ‘FreeStyle Lite’ mark, and number 4,210,535 for a logo of a butterfly with a silver body and black wings that is featured on the boxes.

“The pharmacy defendants are selling the diverted ‘FreeStyle’ test strips to US consumers and submitting fraudulent reimbursement claims to insurance companies, Medicare, Medicaid, and other third-party payors, claiming to have sold domestic ‘FreeStyle’ test strips which, unlike diverted international test strips, are eligible for reimbursement,” said Abbott.

It added that these “false submissions” caused, and continued to cause, Abbott to pay out, wrongfully, millions of dollars in rebates.

On Thursday, July 20, Abbott and Physician’s Choice entered a request for a consent judgment and permanent injunction.

As part of the settlement, Physician’s Choice is enjoined from selling the grey market strips

Physician's Choice must maintain complete records of its purchases and sales of all products bearing any of the FreeStyle marks for a period of four years and alert Abbott to any future sales/purchases of international strips in the US of which it becomes aware.

The pharmacy stated that it had entered into the consent judgment “solely to avoid further litigation”.

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