Healthy Skepticism Library item: 10038
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Cerojano T.
Philippines Challenges Pfizer Patent
Associated Press 2007 May 8
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/05/08/ap3695984.html
Full text:
A petition was filed Tuesday to cancel Pfizer’s Philippine patent on the anti-hypertension drug Norvasc after a U.S. court invalidated the company’s rights over its second best-selling medicine.
The Philippine International Trading Corp., the government agency in charge of importing pharmaceutical products, argued before the Intellectual Property Office that the patent on amlodipine besylate – or Norvasc – should not have been granted to Pfizer Limited, the UK-based branch of Pfizer Inc., in 1990 because it was not a new product.
PITC acting head Teddy Rivera said voiding Pfizer’s patent on the drug – with annual sales of 1.5 billion pesos (US$31 million; euro23 million) – would mean savings of up to 100 million pesos (US$2 million; euro1.5 million) a month for Filipino consumers, who could buy the cheaper, generic version of the medicine.
Cancellation of the patent before its scheduled expiry in June would also lead to the early dismissal of a lawsuit filed by Pfizer against PITC and the Bureau of Food and Drugs for patent infringement, Rivera told a news conference.
The suit was filed last year after the drugs bureau approved PITC’s import registration for the generic version of Norvasc from Pakistan that is nearly four times cheaper than Pfizer’s selling price of 45 pesos (US$0.95; euro.70) for Norvasc.
“It is the position of government that the patent … issued was void from the beginning and therefore it should be canceled today,” said Alberto Agra, government’s corporate counsel.
Shalimar Vitan of the international aid agency Oxfam said Pfizer has abused its patent protection to the detriment of the poor.
“It is all right for companies to profit,” she said. “The problem is if it means loss of access to medicine and health for the poor.”
Mercy Fabros of AGAP, a coalition pushing for cheaper medicines, noted that hypertension is a leading killer in the Philippines, and for Filipinos, Norvasc’s cost “is really a matter of life and death.”
In March, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a lower court ruling upholding Pfizer’s patent on Norvasc, paving the way for sales of generic versions.
The court ruled that the drug’s key ingredient, amlodipine besylate, was an obvious variation of earlier inventions.
