According to the article, it occured between 2009 and 2014. Not sure exactly how much profit they made off of it and it's probably not easy to find out, but of the three drugs they marketed in unlawful ways, Tysabri for instance had US sales of $58m in the 08-09 year. And that's sales not pure profit after costs.
Ask and ye shall receive: Biogen annual net income for the year ending...
2010-June-30: $1094M
2011-June-30: $1076M
2012-June-30: $1342M
2013-June-30: $1608M
2014-June-30: $2140M
2015-June-30: $3490M
Also, because someone asked, edgar has a bar chart breakdown of Biogen's product revenue. The lawsuit was about Biogen's drugs Avonex, Tysabri and Tecfidera. The bar chart (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/875045/0000875045150...) seems to indicate that these three were responsible for about 80-83% of Biogen's revenues (and presumably net income?) in 2014.
I guess what we don't know is what their sales would have been like without the kickbacks? Less, presumably? But 0? Probably not.
If found guilty, you can be banned from doing any business with Medicare and Medicaid in the US - that’s already a part of the law and it’s the same as losing 50% of your revenue in perpetuity.
But it’s never used. Well, they used it on Pfizer, but the agreement was the ban was for a shell company they owned that didn’t actually sell any drugs. A sacrificial lamb if you will.
“A Pfizer subsidiary, Pharmacia and Upjohn Inc., which was acquired in 2003, has agreed to plead guilty to one count of felony misbranding.”
That actually might be an interesting deterrent worth pursuing. The President and perhaps Secretary of Commerce could probably tell the US Patent Office what to do, such as invalidate a patent. Although the constitution grants these discretionary monopolies, it doesn't stipulate how, with patents being a coincidence by Congress to fulfill that and the "limited time" aspect of that article of the constitution is already fulfilled.
Everything is an expense no matter what. Even if you were to have prison time or capital punishment, that is just an expense to someone else. E.g. How much for a fall guy
