Patent battles can be confusing. So, always apply cold logic first. When Indian drugmaker Cipla got sued by MNC Roche because the former had produced a generic version of the latter?s patented anticancer drug, this newspaper had argued that the question of affordable lifesaving drugs has to be separated from the issue of honouring patents. Now MNC Pfizer has sued Ranbaxy in America. Pfizer?s best-selling anticholesterol drug, Lipitor, and a Lipitor combination drug, Caduet, are the issue. And the balance of our intellectual argument is in favour of?no, not the patent-holding MNC?but the generics manufacturer. Logic dictates this. Ranbaxy-Pfizer litigation has been going on for some time and in many countries. Patent rulings differ from country to country. But the fact is that Pfizer is fighting to extend the product patent on Lipitor and Caduet beyond the original expiry date, and Ranbaxy is arguing that rights for generic manufacture shouldn?t be delayed. Pfizer would have been less keen had there been a big drug in its development pipeline that could have taken Lipitor?s place when the patent expires in 2010. But there isn?t. Indeed, between this year and 2010, patents on some of Big Pharma?s best-selling drugs will expire; 10 patents expire in 2008 alone. Big Pharma must be worried about making money, but that?s no reason to allow patent tweaking. That?s the basic logic. It holds irrespective of what the US court in Delaware and other courts find. Patents are given for a certain number of years, and patent ?evergreening? is wrong.
Instructively, Big Pharma?s other post-patent tactic is odd, too. This is the concept of ?authorised generics??that is, licensing the brand of a patent-expired drug to a generic manufacturer. This is not illegal; Merck has cut such a deal in America on its patent-expired osteoporosis drug, Fosamax. But consumers deserve to know that a generic that doesn?t carry the old brand identity is therapeutically no inferior to one that does. So, physicians have a key role to play here. By 2011, drugs with sales of more than $60 billion will lose their patent in America. Manufacturers of generics, especially Indian ones, will profit. Desperate action by patent holders in future should be dealt with as severely as desperate action by patent busters now.