DRUG giant Pfizer has won a case in the High Court that will keep a cheaper cholesterol drug out of the Irish market until November 2011.
The decision prevents India's Ranbaxy Laboratories from launching a generic competitor to Pfizer's blockbuster Lipitor before its patent expires in four years' time.
The court ruled that a patent protecting Lipitor would be infringed by a competing product from Ranbaxy Laboratories. Lipitor generated worldwide revenues of more than $15bn for Pfizer last year alone.
It is taken by thousands of Irish people to control their cholesterol levels.
A Ranbaxy spokesman said the company would lodge an appeal against the ruling.
Lipitor is the world's top-selling drug and amounted to more than one-quarter of Pfizer's $48bn revenue last year.
The company has been defending its intellectual property for the drug around the world against generic drug manufacturer Ranbaxy. Pfizer, the world's largest drug manufacturer, is also trying to protect Lipitor's market share against an influx of inexpensive generic versions of other cholesterol medicines.
Last month, the British Court of Appeal rejected an appeal by Ranbaxy Laboratories against a ruling issued last October that its atorvastatin product would infringe the main patent that covers Pfizer's Lipitor.
The appeal court ruling upheld that of a lower court, from October 2005, which ruled that Pfizer's European patent, number 409281, was invalid. However, it also found that Ranbaxy's proposed product would infringe Pfizer's patent 247633, which covers the active ingredient in the US firm's drug.
Dublin City Coroner Brian Farrell recently ruled that Lipitor was responsible for the death of a woman after she had a "severe reaction" to the treatment.
He added that he would be writing to the Irish Medicines Board to draw its attention to the fact that Audrey Duffy (77), from Ballaly Drive in Dundrum, died from complications after taking the drug.
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