US court strikes down state drug data mining law

WASHINGTON, June 23 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court struck down on Thursday a state law that prohibits the use of prescription drug records for marketing, in a case pitting free-speech rights against medical privacy concerns.

The high court handed a victory to data mining companies IMS Health, Verispan and Source Healthcare Analytics, a unit of Dutch publisher Wolters Kluwer (WLSNc.AS), that collect and sell such information and that challenged the law. (Reporting by James Vicini, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)