With the Supreme Court refusing to give any relief to Cadila Healthcare Ltd on Monday, the pharma major cannot sell its anti-depressant drug Venz OD for another three months. A bench headed by Justice Markandey Katju, while refusing to stay the Madras High Court order that restricted Cadila from selling its anti-depressant drug, asked the high court to decide the trademark violation case ?expeditiously? by June 30.
??without expressing our opinion? the suit must be decided positively by the high court by June 30, 2010,? the court ordered.
Refusing Cadila?s plea to vacate the temporary restriction imposed by the high court, Justice Katju observed that ?heavens will not fall if you wait for another three months.?
The petition pertains to an anti-depressant drug Venz OD launched by Zydus Cadila in November 2009. Sun Pharma, which has been selling Veniz for the last 10 years, had alleged Zydus of infringing its trademark drug Veniz XR. While seeking stay on the high court order, Cadila senior counsel Rajeev Dhawan said there was no similarity between the rival trademarks visually, phonetically or structurally.
He said it was the common practice of drug companies to derive name of the drug from active pharmaceutical ingredient which in the present case was Venlafaxine.
Sun Pharma senior counsel Mukul Rohtagi and K V Mohan argued that the comparision had to be between Veniz-XR and Venz-OD and when the marks were compared in totality, there was a clear phonetic similarity.