TRENTON, N.J. — Drugmaker Merck & Co. on Thursday said it doesn’t expect arbitrators to rule until sometime next year on its multibillion-dollar dispute with Johnson & Johnson over rights to two lucrative drugs for immune disorders.
That’s after an arbitration panel of three former federal judges heard and saw evidence from the rival drugmakers during hearings in New York that began in late September.
The dispute centers on rights to more than $2 billion in annual sales for two medicines for rheumatoid arthritis and other immune diseases, Remicade and successor drug Simponi. J&J argues that because Merck bought Schering-Plough Corp., J&J’s deal to share the drugs’ revenue with Schering-Plough should be terminated.
Merck, based in Whitehouse Station, N.J., said Thursday the hearings have ended but refused to say when that happened or give any details.
“The next steps are that both sides are going to file post-hearing briefs to the panel,” followed by oral arguments, said Merck spokesman Steven Campanini.
A Johnson & Johnson spokesman said in an e-mail that evidence collection has finished in the arbitration, which J&J initiated in a bid to gain all global revenue from the drugs. They are on pace for combined sales of well more than $7 billion this year.
“Oral argument is scheduled for late in this year. It is possible we could have a decision in the first half of 2011,” spokesman Bill Price wrote.
That revenue was a key reason Merck bought Schering-Plough for $41.1 billion in November. In a strategy to hang on to that revenue, Merck structured the purchase of Kenilworth, N.J.-based Schering-Plough as a reverse merger, meaning that technically Schering-Plough was listed as the surviving corporation even though the company retained Merck’s much better-known name.
