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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – The Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday on whether pharmaceutical companies should be allowed to use medical profiles taken from the Internet for their sales pitches.

Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont have enacted laws to limit the access to patient information over the Internet.

The pharmaceutical industry, led by health information company IMS Health, is challenging the laws before other states enact more of them. Twenty-five states are considering similar laws.

At stake in the dispute is valuable marketing data for pharmaceutical companies.

By “data mining” with a few keywords, health information companies can know what doctors are prescribing and how much of it. They then sell the information to drug manufacturers.

The information allows the companies to target their marketing to doctors most likely to become their customers.

However, many doctors – and some of their patients – want the companies to stay out of what they say is their private information.

They have been joined by health regulators and consumer advocates who say the outcome of the case is likely to influence medical decisions and health care expenses.

Pharmaceutical companies and data collection firms say gathering prescription information from the Internet is a First Amendment free speech right of theirs.

The dispute arose in the courts when IMS Health and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America challenged the state bans in U.S. District Court in Vermont.

The Vermont law forbids buying and selling prescription information without the consent of doctors listed in the data.

The doctors must agree in their license renewal forms to have their prescription information sold for marketing.

The U.S. District Court upheld the state law but the Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision. Vermont Attorney General William H. Sorrell petitioned the Supreme Court for a final decision.

Thomas Goldstein, IMS Health’s attorney, argued that laws restricting sales of information to pharmaceutical companies had the effect of driving sales to generic drug companies. As a result, the laws encourage unfair competition.

“What the state doesn’t get to do is just pick sides and prevent the debate from happening,” Goldstein said.

Several Supreme Court justices appeared to be sympathetic to his argument.

Chief Justice John Roberts implied that by “censoring” marketing information, Vermont sought to reduce health care costs by driving more business to cheaper generic drug companies.

Justice Anthony Kennedy accused Vermont of “regulating speech” with its law.

Justice Antonin Scalia said a doctor can easily stop a pharmaceutical company’s marketing pitches.

“He can do that by saying, I don’t want to talk to you,” Scalia said.

However, Vermont Assistant Attorney General Bridget Asay said the law protects the privacy of doctors. She also said companies that trade in Internet drug marketing data are buying and selling “inside information,” which normally is forbidden under federal law.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg described the law as unfairly favoring generic drugs.

“You can’t lower the decibel level of one speaker so that another speaker, in this case the generics, can be heard better?” she asked Asay.

Both sides lined up powerful allies who filed amicus briefs in the case.

For the pharmaceutical industry, they include the National Association of Chain Drugstores, Bloomberg News and the Association of National Advertisers.

Vermont’s attorney general won support from the U.S. Justice Department, attorneys general of dozens of states, AARP, the New England Journal of Medicine and several medical associations.

The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling before July. The case is Sorrell v. IMS Health, No. 10-779.

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