Advocate General Mazak has recommended that the European Court of Justice follows the European Union’s lower court, the General Court, in approving the European Commission’s decision and giving a €53m fine of AstraZeneca for abusing its dominant position. The General Court ruled in 2010 that the pharmaceutical giant had misled patent offices in the evidence that it had given in order to extend the patent rights. It had also abused its dominant position by withdrawing one form of its Losec products (the capsules) in certain territories in the EU and replacing them with another (the tablets) in order to block the entry of generic products and restrict parallel importing. The Advocate General is the ECJ’s advisor and their opinions are followed in the majority of cases. We will now await the decision of the full court.
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