Roche has filed suit against Ventana Medical Systems in hopes of convincing Delaware Chancery Court to invalidate a “poison pill” defense that could thwart its hostile $3 billion cash bid. The drugmaker, which is willing to pay $75 a share - a 45 percent premium - for the diagnostics company, contends the anti-takeover tactic would flood the market with new Ventana shares and is “unfair.” Ventana directors, Roche charges, “have failed to discharge their fiduciary duties by refusing properly to consider Roche’s proposal,” Bloomberg News reports.

Pfizer asked a Nigerian court today to dismiss a state-level civil case seeking $2 billion in damages over allegations it conducted a clinical trials that led to deaths and disabilities among children more than a decade ago, the Associated Press reports. The drugmaker denies the charges, which are at the heart of a separate case filed by the federal government that seeks $7 billion. Pfizer argued the state-level court lacks jurisdiction and papers were served incorrectly. The judge’s ruling was scheduled for July 30. A separate criminal case seeking to hold several Pfizer officers personally responsible is scheduled for a hearing on July 9 in Kano.

AstraZeneca is delaying the start of its new exclusive distribution system in the UK until early 2008, Reuters reports. The drugmaker tapped Alliance Boots’ UniChem wholesaler and AAH Pharmaceuticals as distributors in April and hoped to start its new system in August. The move is opposed by independent wholesalers, who argue they stifle competition. The UK consumer affairs watchdog, the Office of Fair Trading, is investigating. Pfizer, which is doing the same thing, says it needs to ensure secure supplies and thwart counterfeits. But critics say the real aim is to fight parallel trade, a legal practice in Europe of importing meds for resale into places like the UK from countries in southern Europe where prices are lower.

And Glaxo is ready to work with Japanese drugmakers if the Japanese government agrees to stockpile its pre-pandemic vaccine for bird flu, Jean Stephenne, president of Glaxo Biologicals told a Tokyo news conference. Japan’s vaccine market is tightly controlled, but if a bird flu pandemic hits, Japanese companies could make vaccines using Glaxo technology, The International Herald Tribune reports. Separately, Imperial Innovations Group named Richard Sykes, a former Glaxo chairman, as chairman of Circassia, its spin-out and speciality biopharma company, The Times of London notes.

Finally, Europe must fund the creation of generic industries in poor countries as the long-term solution to the developing world’s health crisis, the European parliament will demand next week. If the European Union doesn’t act, members from all parties are threatening to block a modified intellectual property protection plan to guard patents, The Financial Times reports. A 1994 World Trade Organization agreement, known as TRIPS, is under pressure from Brazil and Thailand, which have issued compulsory licences for domestic companies to make generics.