Pharmacy Daily | AstraZeneca loses battle

YESTERDAY AstraZeneca lost its battle to block generic versions of Crestor (rosuvastatin) in the Federal Court of Australia, after Judge Jagot found several of the company’s patents to be invalid, and revoked them. The ruling effectively overturned a judgment in May 2012 which up held the company’s intellectual property claims over the drug (which were all due to run until at least 2020). This decision was challenged by generic drugmakers Apotex, Watson Pharma and Ascent Pharma in the Federal Court case, with each of the companies aiming to bring a generic rosuvastatin to market. Crestor is a lucrative drug for AstraZeneca, with the medicine bringing in around $350 million from Australia last year alone. According to analysts, Australian sales of Crestor represent around 6% of the total turnover for AstraZeneca, leaving it open to significant losses should generic versions of the drug enter the landscape. AstraZeneca has said that it is currently considering its legal options in Australia, and that it may launch further action, labelling yesterday’s decision as “disappointing”. The Federal Court finding comes at a bad time for the company, after it announced in January a 17% drop in annual sales, mainly due to due patent protection losses for Seroquel and Nexium. Interestingly though, the ruling follows in the wake of a win for AstraZeneca in the US courts in December 2012, in which an appeals court upheld Crestor’s intellectual property patent protection until 2016.

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