Division Addresses and the nature of the infringements

The decision is addressed to the Swedish company AstraZeneca AB and the UK company AstraZeneca Plc (hereinafter ‘AZ’) due to their infringements of Article 82 of the EC Treaty and Article 54 of the EEA Agreement.

The infringements concern abuses by AZ of government procedures in seven EEA Contracting States aimed at excluding generic firms and — in the context of the second infringement — parallel traders from competing against AZ’s pharmaceutical product Losec. The first abuse involved misuses of a Council Regulation^f1 (hereinafter ‘SPC Regulation’) under which the basic patent protection for pharmaceutical products can be extended. The second abuse concerned misuses of procedures relating to the authorisation of marketing of pharmaceutical products.