Novatis Korea, 5 Copyright arrangements including Exelon

Review of sale of 5 CNS drug’s copyrights...sales slumped after rebate suspension

The company says, in strategy propulsion of optimizing its product portfolio ... No withdrawal of the medicine business division

Exelon Capsules

Novartis Korea is working copyright control of some central nervous system (CNS) medicines such as Excelon.

 

According to the industry on 14th Novartis Korea is considering selling the copyrights of some of the CNS products sold by the Rx medicine business division.

 

The intention is to clean up less profitable items and focus sales marketing activities on the company's flagship products.

 

The abolition of division in charge of CNS products such as dementia, epilepsy and Parkinson's disease drugs has already been phased out, leaving only official announcements.

 

Novartis' original copyrighted products are sold to domestic pharmaceutical companies, and it is likely to return the original copyrighted products from other industry to the original developer.

 

Novartis will continue to supply products while maintaining product licensing rights, but the overall sales activities, including product promotions and sales manpower, will be handed over to domestic pharmaceutical companies.

 

The contract partner is not yet confirmed.

 

The products sold by the CNS department are five drugs, including anti-intermittent drugs named 'Trileptal' and 'Tegretol', Parkinson's drugs named 'Stalevo' and 'Comtan' and Alzheimer's dementia drugs named 'Exelon'.

 

Parkinson's drugs named Stalevo and Comtan, are two products that Novartis does not own the original copyright and are likely to return to the original developer without re-signing.

 

Drugs under the copyright sale has been a record a sharp decrease in sales after the rebate suspension According to UBIST Data Bank, outpatient prescriptions sales for ‘Excelon’ in 2018 were ₩1.8 billion, 86.7% less than in 2016, before the suspension of reimbursement was imposed.

 

The total sales of five products in the CNS department, including Exelon, dropped 57.3% from ₩51.5 billion in 2013 to ₩21.6 billion in 2018.

 

In this regard, Novartis Korea was found to provide medical workers with illegal rebates and was suspended from the MOHW for six months (Aug 24 2017 ~ Feb 23 2018) for nine items in 2017.

 

At the time, the sales loss was big due to the inclusion of four different doses of Execlon capsules and three different doses of Execlon patches.

 

The company’s stance is that it is just to optimize the CNS portfolio, not related to the rebate case.

 

A Novartis official said, “In the process of optimizing our product portfolio strategy, we are reducing the activity of some older products and increasing the concentration of new drugs.

 

Reducing the domestic sales marketing of some items does not mean we withdraw our business division.

 

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