Antitrust enforcers have recently accused Ovation Pharmaceuticals of cornering the U.S. Market on a drug for a congenital heart defect in premature infants. Furthermore, they asked a court to break up the company's monopoly on that specific medication. The company imposed a 1,300 percent price increase for the drug Indocin IV, right after it acquired the U.S. Rights to NeoProfen, the only other drug used to treat the potentially fatal defect, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said on Tuesday. The congenital disease represents the failure of a blood vessel in the heart. It is found in more than 30,000 premature infants each year in the United States.

The FTC sued in federal court in Minnesota in order to force Ovation to sell one of the drugs and repay to customers all the unlawfully obtained profits from the drug monopoly they imposed since 2006. Even so, an Ovation Pharmaceuticals told the media that the company is always willing to demonstrate its justice in court. Ovation purchased the rights to Indocin from Merck, in August 2005 and the ones for NeoProfen from Abbott Laboratories in January 2006.

What is it a monopoly? Because people who want to buy the drug can't buy it from elsewhere and, therefore, they must pay exactly how much Ovation asks for. The company raised the price of Indocin to about $500 and set the price for NeoProfen at $483, when it started selling it in July 2006. The two drugs are the only alternative to risky surgery to treat a condition known as patent ductus arteriosus, in which a blood vessel connecting two heart arteries fails to close.