Monday, January 14, 2008

Forest Laboratories, Inc. and Merz Pharma GmbH & Co. KgaA File Lawsuits Against Several Companies for Patent Infringement

NEW YORK, January 10, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Forest Laboratories, Inc. , Forest Laboratories Holdings, Ltd., Merz Pharma GmbH & Co. KgaA, and Merz Pharmaceuticals GmbH announced that they have filed lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware against several companies for infringement of U.S. Patent No. 5,061,703 (the '703 patent), which relates to Forest's Namenda(R) product. The defendants named in the lawsuits include Barr Laboratories, Inc., Cobalt Laboratories, Inc., Lupin Ltd., Orchid Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc., Upsher-Smith Laboratories Inc., Wockhardt Ltd., and related companies and subsidiaries thereof. The '703 patent expires in April 2010. Forest has applied for patent term extension which, if granted, would extend the '703 patent until September 2013.

As previously reported, Forest had received notification from several companies that they had filed Abbreviated New Drug Applications with Paragraph IV certifications to obtain approval to market generic versions of Namenda.

Except for the historical information contained herein, this release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform act of 1995. These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including the difficulty of predicting FDA approvals, the acceptance and demand for new pharmaceutical products, the impact of competitive products and pricing, the timely development and launch of new products, and the risk factors listed from time to time in each of Forest Laboratories' Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and any subsequent SEC filings.

No comments: