A group of multinational drug makers has filed patent-infringement lawsuits against Korean pharmaceutical companies in an apparent bid to keep the prices of their drug products at current levels.

Pfizer is suing nine Korean drugmakers, claiming they violated its patents related to the production of its Detrusitol SR incontinence med. The lawsuit came after the South Korean firms produced a similar drug based on elements used in the Pfizer med and applied for pricing with the South Korean Health Insurance Review Agency, which means that those drugs will soon be put on sale in the Korean market.

“As far as we know, Pfizer filed a suit in mid-April; we only recently received the documents,” said a spokesman for Boryung, one of the drugmakers involved in the legal action. “Pfizer does not have the patents that it claims to possess and its allegation that we violated its drug formula patents is groundless. We believe we can win the suit without much trouble.”

In response, Pfizer Korea admitted it does not have patents in the Korean market for elements used in making its incontinence treatment medicine. Lee Eun-jung, an official of Pfizer Korea, said: “We possess a patent regarding how to help the medicine’s elements be abosrbed at a certain pace. The suit is about that patent.”

If Pfizer loses the suit, local pharmaceutical companies will be allowed to produce the generic medicines in question, which will thus result in a 20 percent fall in its incontinence treatment medicine prices, in line with the Korean government’s efforts to offer drugs at prices deemed appropriate under Korea’s nationalized health insurance system.

Patent attorney Nam Hui-seop says the number of such lawsuits will likely soar in the near future as South Korea and the US on April 2 reached a free trade agreement, under which the government’s pricing and approval procedure for the sale of generic drugs would be temporarily suspended for the duration of any patent lawsuit brought against a domestic drug maker.

Full story in The Hankyoreh.

[tags]Generics, Patents, South Korea[/tags]