NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Apotex Corp. has settled all outstanding patent infringement and antitrust litigation with Pfizer Inc. (PFE) regarding that company's former blockbuster anticonvulsant Neurontin.
Though terms of the settlement are confidential, Apotex said that it is free to market and sell the generic version as it has done since April 2005.
The agreement ends almost a decade of litigation between the two companies.
Pfizer added Neurontin to its drug stable when it purchased Warner-Lambert in February 2000. The drug had received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in January 1994.
In 2005, the federal district court in New Jersey ruled that Pfizer was unable to prove infringement of its Neurontin patents by generic drug makers including Alpharma Inc. (ALO), Apotex, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Inc. (TEVA) and Eon Labs, which is part of Novartis AG (NVS).
In September, an appeals court overturned portions of the 2005 decision and sent the case to a new trial after ruling that the district court erred in granting summary judgment of non-infringement.
Afterward, Pfizer said it planned to pursue full damages due to the so-called at-risk launch of generic versions of Neurontin, the patent for which doesn't expire until 2017.
Such a move is called an at-risk launch because, under U.S. law, the generic maker can be liable for triple the damages incurred by the branded-drug company if it ends up losing the patent case.
Pfizer says sales of Neurontin were more than $2 billion a year, prior to the generic versions' launching.
Pfizer offers a generic version of Neurontin through its unit Greenstone Ltd.
No comments:
Post a Comment