Napp (CAT & EWCA)
Napp Pharmaceutical Holdings Limited v Director General of Fair Trading
CAT judgment (155 pages, PDF) of 15 January 2002
Court of Appeal judgment (12 pages, HTML) of 8 May 2002 (refusing permission to appeal)
List of case documents from CAT website
Administrative stage
OFT decision (72 pages, PDF) of 5 April 2001
Napp is an early case of abuse of dominant position under the UK Competition Act 1998. The appeals to the Competition Appeal Tribunal and the Court of Appeal left the OFT's original findings largely undisturbed.
The abuses were committed by Napp in its marketing of sustained release morphine, which is used as a painkiller for cancer and other severe pain conditions. Napp was the incumbent in the supply of these products, and had held a patent on such a formulation which expired in 1992.
There were two separate abuses:
- Adopting a strategy for retaining the bulk of the market for supplies to hospital which was predatory and exclusionary through the use of excessive and anti-competitively targeted discounts on prices.
- Charging exploitative excessive prices in the community (for supplies through retail pharmacists).
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Last changed by Franck at 4:11 PM on Sunday 7 January 2007.