Senate passes 'pay-for-delay' bill for biosimilars

The Senate passed a bill Monday that includes a provision to make it more difficult for branded drugmakers to strike “pay-for-delay” deals with biologic and biosimilar companies.

The language aims to modernize reporting requirements for biologics and biosimilars by requiring patent settlements with branded drugmakers to be submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Existing law, which requires such reporting only for deals between generic and branded drugmakers, is part of an effort to block “pay-for-delay” settlements, in which a branded drugmaker pays a generics company to delay the launch of its generic...