Eli Lilly's

Our human pharmaceutical products compete globally with products of many other companies in highly competitive markets. Our animal health products compete globally with products of animal health care companies as well as pharmaceutical, chemical, and other companies that operate animal health businesses.
Important competitive factors for both human pharmaceutical and animal health products include effectiveness, safety, and ease of use; price and demonstrated cost-effectiveness; marketing effectiveness; and research and development of new products and processes. Most new products that we introduce must compete with other branded or generic products already on the market or products that are later developed by competitors. If competitors introduce new products or delivery systems with therapeutic or cost advantages, our products can be subject to decreased sales, progressive price reductions, or both.

We believe our long-term competitive success depends upon discovering and developing (either alone or in collaboration with others) or acquiring innovative, cost-effective human pharmaceutical and animal health products that provide improved outcomes and deliver value to payers, together with our ability to continuously improve the productivity of our operations in a highly competitive environment. There can be no assurance that our research and development efforts will result in commercially successful products, and it is possible that our products will become uncompetitive from time to time as a result of products developed by our competitors.

Generic Pharmaceuticals
One of the biggest competitive challenges we face is from generic pharmaceuticals. In the U.S. and the EU, the regulatory approval process for human pharmaceuticals (other than biological products (biologics)) exempts generics from costly and time-consuming clinical trials to demonstrate their safety and efficacy, allowing generic manufacturers to rely on the safety and efficacy of the innovator product. Therefore, generic manufacturers generally invest far less than we do in research and development and can price their products much lower than our branded products. Accordingly, when a branded non-biologic human pharmaceutical loses its market exclusivity, it normally faces intense price competition from generic forms of the product. In many countries outside the U.S., intellectual property protection is weak and we must compete with generic or counterfeit versions of our products. Many of our animal health products also compete with generics.