A United States federal grand jury has indicted a person from India for allegedly selling counterfeit cancer drugs and shipping them to Houston. The counterfeits are reported to include fake versions of MSD’s Keytruda®, Pfizer’s Adcetris® and Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdivo®. It appears that these counterfeits were packaged using the genuine manufacturer’s registered trade marks but did not contain any active ingredients. The investigation of the alleged crime included sales to undercover agents.
As we have previously reported, counterfeit drugs are often combated by civil lawsuits. When a counterfeit product contains no active ingredient, patent protection is unlikely to apply and any civil suit would need to rely instead on trade mark rights, fair trading laws and other related law applicable in the relevant jurisdiction. It is not known whether any manufacturer will file a civil suit in relation to this case.