The General Court has upheld the decision by EU antitrust regulators to fine AstraZeneca in 2005 for blocking cheaper generic medicines coming to the market.

The European Commission said that AZ had breached EU rules by blocking or delaying market access for generic versions of its ulcer pill Losec (omeprazole) from 1993 to 2000.

The original fine of 60 million euros was reduced to 52.5 million, however, following AZ’s appeal to the General Court, the EU’s second-highest court.

“The General Court essentially upholds the decision of the Commission which found that the AstraZeneca Group abused its dominant position by preventing the marketing of generic products replicating Losec,” the court said in a statement.

The fine was reduced as the Commission had not proved that the deregistration of marketing authorisations for the drug in Denmark and Norway affected parallel imports. But the court did back the Commission’s finding that the company had provided misleading information to patent offices in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Britain.

“We were disappointed that the court hasn’t confirmed our position. We will be reviewing it in detail and decide on any next step once we have a chance to go through it in more detail,” said AstraZeneca spokeswoman Sarah Lindgreen.

The British Generic Manufacturers Association (BGMA) has applauded the ruling. BGMA Director Warwick Smith said that the findings “are consistent with those of the European Commission’s inquiry into the pharmaceutical sector and our own experience that the research-based pharmaceutical industry uses a toolkit of devices to prevent generic launch when the patents on its drugs expire. This costs the NHS many millions of pounds and diverts the research-based industry from its true task of developing new medicines that patients need.”

AZ has two months to appeal against the ruling at the Court of Justice, the EU’s top court.