NEW YORK, Oct. 23 (UPI) -- Pfizer said Monday a U.S. appeals court has denied generic drug maker Ranbaxy's rehearing request in the firms' Lipitor patent dispute.
The drug giant said the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has turned down Ranbaxy's petition for a rehearing of the court's Aug. 2 decision upholding the exclusivity of the main patent covering atorvastatin, the active ingredient in Lipitor.
The Lipitor patent runs until March 2010.
"The court has declined to further review the August 2 decision," said Peter Richardson, Pfizer's senior vice president and associate general counsel. "As we noted in our response to the rehearing petition, the issues in this case were straightforward, the lower court's decision was consistent with prior law, and it raised no matters of exceptional importance requiring that they be revisited again."
Pfizer said it would file with the U.S. patent office to correct a technical defect in a second patent covering atorvastatin's calcium salt. That patent, which expires in June 2011, was ruled invalid by the court on technical grounds.
But the company noted the battle might not be over: Ranbaxy could seek U.S. Supreme Court review of the appeals court's decision.
Worldwide sales of Lipitor for the third quarter of 2006 totaled $3.3 billion, up 15 percent from the same quarter in 2005, with U.S. sales reaching $2.1 billion, rising 19 percent over the third quarter of 2005.
