The Drug Industry Document Archive (DIDA) was created by the Center for Knowledge Management at the University of California San Francisco Library in collaboration with faculty members C. Seth Landefeld, MD and Michael Steinman, MD to house material pertaining to United States of America ex rel. David Franklin vs. Parke-Davis, Division of Warner-Lambert (now owned by Pfizer, Inc). Filed by former Parke-Davis employee David Franklin, the lawsuit alleged that the company violated federal regulations by engaging in systematic efforts to promote the drug gabapentin (Neurontin) for uses not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Drs. Steinman and Landefeld were unpaid expert witnesses on behalf of the plaintiff and wrote an expert report for the court regarding marketing practices for gabapentin and its potential impact on physician prescribing.

Franklin v. Parke-Davis and related claims were concluded in May 2004 with a $430 million settlement and an agreement to plead guilty to resolve civil liabilities and criminal charges pertaining to this case. The U.S. Department of Justice press release is available at: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2004/May/04_civ_322.htm)

Documents were obtained from public-access files of the United States District Court for Massachusetts and other sources including the plaintiff's law firm. These include materials written by Parke-Davis and companies with whom it worked which were entered as evidence, and legal documents outlining the progress of the litigation.
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A set of eighteen documents from Thomas Cona et. al. v. Merck & Co. was added in March 2008. These documents were cited in "Shades of Ghostwriting: A case study of industry documents from the Vioxx litigation" by Joseph Ross, et. al (accepted for publication in JAMA).

The archive was founded with the support of a gift made by Thomas Greene to The Regents of the University of California in February 2005. Mr. Greene's law firm represented Mr. Franklin in the litigation from which many of the archived documents were obtained.