Actavis, the Iceland-based generic company, yesterday launched the most high profile commercial challenge in western Europe to Pfizer's best-selling and patent protected medicine.
The company said it had made a first shipment of 30m tablets into Spain of a cheaper variant of Lipitor, known generically as atorvastatin, which is widely prescribed by doctors to lower cholesterol in the blood.
The action, up to two years ahead of the expiry of patents on Lipitor in most western markets, marks an important threat to Pfizer, the world's largest pure pharmaceuticals company by market capitalisation, which has vigorously fought generic companies' efforts to launch their own lower-cost equivalents in the courts.
No comments:
Post a Comment