Pfizer’s Lipitor Patent Upheld

Pfizer Inc. has scored a legal victory against India’s Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd., pushing a global effort annul patent protections from Lipitor.

Generic drugmaker Ranbaxy, which makes a copycat Lipitor for the Subcontinent market, lost a U.S. legal case that sought to have Pfizer’s patents on Lipitor’s active ingredient, atorvastatin, declared invalid.

But a federal court in Delaware ruled Friday that Pfizer is entitled to a permanent injunction against Ranbaxy from selling its generic version of atorvastatin for six more years. Ranbaxy intends to appeal the decision.

The decision heartened Pfizer’s leadership.

Today marks a major victory for medical innovators and the patients who depend on them for important new therapies, said Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Hank McKinnell. Together with the decision in October by the United Kingdom’s High Court of Justice, we have now successfully defended our Lipitor patent rights in two important jurisdictions.