Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Newsflash! - Goliath wounds David!

Goliath Pfizer wounded David Ranbaxy in the UK patent courts today, in a battle over Lipitor.

http://www.forbes.com/markets/2005/10/12/pfizer-patent-pharmaceuticals-1012markets03.html?partner=rss

The scores are now 1:1.

Bring on the US decider!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that is the least of Pfizer's problem regarding Lipitor.

Their biggest challenge will be the patent expiration of Zocor next year.

Basically, Lipitor and Zocor are almost identical drugs. It will take quite a twist of marketing to justify the high price of Lipitor compared to generic Zocor.

HMOs and Health Insurance Co are figuring that one out.

insider said...

Good point. Is there any sign that HMOs and PBMs will actively manage substitution of simva for Lipitor?

Insider

Anonymous said...

You seem to be taking great joy in saying David has wounded Goliath. I'm surprised at this as you seem to be generally reasonably well informed. Ranbaxy are no Robin Hoods - if they win the case in the US they would have a huge payday for absolutely no R&D effort, and therefore contributed absolutely zero to the knowledge of mankind. Is this fair? The Lipitor patents have still got 6/7 or so years to run. If companies can't protect their inventions then there's no incentive in spending the vast amounts of money it requires to make them. Big Pharma are not saints but you've got to be realistic in all of this and see the bigger picture.

insider said...

Actually I said Goliath has wounded David! I had hoped for 100% success for Ranbaxy!

These Pfizer patents are an example of "evergreening". See some of my earlier posts.

I have no illusions about Ranbaxy. But compared to Pfizer, I choose them!

Now. About innovative research. Big Pharma does not do as much of this as they claim to. Most of it is "me-tooovation".

The British Medical Journal has just published a significant article about medicine costs. (Morgan SG et al. "Breakthough" drugs and growth in expenditure on prescription drugs in Canada. Br Med J 2005; 331: 815-816.)

Some have suggested that rising health care costs are in part attributable to new, innovative, effective treatments. Morgan et al used existing categorizations by the Canadian Patented Medicine Price Review Board to classify all new prescription drugs available in Canada since 1990.

These were classed as "breakthrough" - "the first drug to treat effectively a particular illness or which provides substantial improvement over existing drug products," to which Morgan and colleagues added later drugs added in the same chemical class; "me-too," other new drugs patented since 1990 that did not provide substantial improvements over existing drugs.

Breakthrough drugs accounted for 6% of expenditure and 1% of use in 1996, and 10% and 2% in 2003.

In contrast, me-too drugs accounted for 44% of use and 63% of expenditure by 2003.

Thanks for posting.

Insider

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the rant.

Anonymous said...

You say rant, I say data.

None the less, you are more than welcome.

Insider