The drugmakers finally found a way to resolve litigation that began a decade ago over Abbott Labs’ TriCor cholesterol drug, which generated more than $1 billion in US sales last year. Teva sought to sell a generic version, but as part of their settlement, agreed to postpone such a move untill March 2011. Terms, however, weren’t disclosed in this SEC filing made by Abbott.

An Abbott spokeswoman tells The Wall Street Journal that Teva isn’t being paid to delay selling a generic, and calls the deal a “pure licensing agreement.” Laboratoires Fournier SA of France, which discovered the drug, also agreed to the settlement.

For the record, drugmakers have often struck deals with generic rivals in which they agreed to make a payment or offered them something else to delay a generic. The FTC estimates ending what it calls ‘pay-to-delay’ deals could save consumers at least $35 billion and save the federal government nearly $12 billion over the next decade. Recently, the Senate Judiciary Committee moved to make it harder for drugmakers to strike these deals (see here).

Under federal law, Teva could have begun selling a generic TriCor in the third quarter of 2010 if its patent lawsuit wasn’t resolved, though Teva would have owed Abbott treble damages if it subsequently lost the lawsuit, Michael Weinstein, a JP Morgan analyst, tells the Journal, which adds that the deal was made just as Abbott is trying to shift TriCor users to a new, branded version called TriLipix that was approved late last year (see here).

Last year, Abbott agreed to pay $184 million to settle lawsuits alleging it modified TriCor to prevent pharmacists from automatically substituting generic equivalents (see here). Antitrust lawsuits filed by several states and the District of Columbia over the practice remain outstanding, the Journal notes.