Pharmaceuticals News
- Pfizer appeals against Viagra ruling
Date: 8-Feb-2007 Sources: (Shenzhen Daily)
U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer said Tuesday it has filed a second appeal after losing a lawsuit in Beijing for the right to use the popular Chinese brand name 'Wei Ge?on its anti-impotency drug Viagra.
Pfizer sued the Guangzhou-based drug company Welman for allegedly copying the appearance of the blue, diamond tablets and also for maliciously registering 'Wei Ge?before Pfizer, saying the Chinese translation had been directly linked to Viagra in media reports since the drug was invented in 1998.
The Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court upheld Pfizer's ownership of the medicine design but rejected the other claim last December. The court said the company was unable to prove it had used the name 'Wei Ge?in promoting Viagra or that the word was an unregistered but widely-recognized name for Viagra in China, according to an official Web site under China's Supreme Court.
The Beijing court ruled that Welman, which applied to register 'Wei Ge?as its brand name before Pfizer in 1998 and passed government examinations in 2002, had acted legally, according to chinacourt.org.
Pfizer had demanded that Welman and two other Chinese drug companies stop using the brand name and pay 500,000 yuan (US$62,500) in compensation. A second appeal was filed on Jan. 30, Pfizer said in a statement.
'The court ruling fails to support Chinese efforts to create an environment of innovation that provides consistent protection of intellectual property rights for companies bringing new medicines to China,'said Pfizer, adding that it has full trust in China's judicial system.
The case was among more than 670 foreign-related law cases involving intellectual property rights handled by the court from 2002 to 2006. About 60 percent of them were won by foreign parties, according to the Web site.
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