West Virginia and other states seek to recover three times the damages suffered by consumers, and the states' Medicaid programs, through the illegal conduct of Mylan and the other defendants. Mylan is the country's second largest generic drug manufacturer. Mylan's wholly-owned subsidiary, Mylan Pharmaceuticals, Inc., operates a research and development center and a manufacturing plant in Morgantown, West Virginia. The complaint charges Mylan with conspiring with the other defendants to restrict the availability of the active ingredients needed to make the generic drugs. Generic drugs are chemically identical to brand-name drugs which are sold after the branded drugs' patents expire.
Generic drugs cost significantly less than name-brand drugs.
Doctors issue more than 18 million prescriptions for lorazepam tablets and 3 million prescriptions for clorazepate tablets each year. Lorazepam is the generic version of Ativan, and clorazepate is the generic version of Tranxene. In the complaint, the states charge that Mylan, Profarmaco, Cambrex and Gyma all conspired with each other to monopolize the market for clorazepate tablets and lorazepam tablets, allowing Mylan to profit enormously, and share the profits with the conspirators. The states also charge Mylan with attempting to monopolize the lorazepam market by entering into exclusive supply agreements with Profarmaco and attempting to do so with SST Corporation, even when Mylan was not legally permitted to use SST's active ingredient because of federal Food and Drug Administration regulations. With the exclusive supply contracts with Profarmaco, Mylan essentially cut off the supply of the active ingredient for the generic drugs from competing manufacturers.