Great news - IMA settles with Pfizer
getting supply agreement instead of damage awards. Win-win situation means good business sense !
biz.yahoo.com
Inverness Medical Innovations Announces Settlement with Pfizer and Conference Call to discuss the Settlement
Monday June 9, 3:27 pm ET
WALTHAM, Mass., June 9 -- Inverness Medical Innovations, Inc. (Amex: IMA - News), a leading provider of women's health and nutritional products and developer of advanced medical device technologies, announced today that it has settled its patent litigation with a subsidiary of Pfizer, Inc. In connection with the settlement, Unipath, Ltd., a subsidiary of Inverness Medical Innovations, Inc., has entered into a five year supply arrangement with Pfizer to supply its U.S. market leader E.P.T.® pregnancy tests, beginning in June, 2004. The settlement provides for Pfizer to make certain payments to Inverness prior to the commencement of the supply arrangement.
Under the terms of the settlement, the parties have agreed to the entry of permanent injunctive relief and dismissal of certain claims and counterclaims. The settlement does not provide for any damage award. Inverness Medical's litigation with other parties on the same patents continues.
Ron Zwanziger, CEO of Inverness Medical said, "We are particularly pleased to establish this supply arrangement with Pfizer, which allows us to provide them with our high quality products, while leaving us free to compete vigorously in the U.S. pregnancy test market with all participants, including Pfizer. We believe that this settlement continues to establish the strength of our rapid assay lateral flow patent portfolio, which has already been proven in Europe through court actions against other parties. We anticipate that the supply arrangement will be accretive to the Company beginning in 2004, when we believe it will add $0.20 -- 0.25 per share to our earnings on a GAAP basis. We currently anticipate that the supply arrangement will add $0.30 -- 0.35 per share to our earnings on a GAAP basis in 2005. This supply arrangement provides a new source of revenue to supplement growth we anticipate from introduction to the market of our new product offerings currently in development"
The Company also announced that it will host a conference call tomorrow, June 10, 2003, beginning at 9:00 a.m. (Eastern Daylight Time) today to discuss the settlement. The Company's responses to questions, as well as other matters discussed during the conference call, may contain or constitute information that has not been disclosed previously. . The conference call can be accessed by dialing 973-582-2706(domestic and international), or via a link on the Inverness website at www.invernessmedical.com or at www.calleci.com. A replay of the call will be available by dialing 973-341-3080(domestic and international) with an access code of 3989947. The replay will be available until 12:00 midnight Eastern Time on June 13, 2003. An on demand webcast of the call will be available at the Inverness website two hours after the end of the call and will be accessible for thirty days through July 10, 2003.
Inverness has been represented in the litigation by J. Anthony Downs, Esq. of Goodwin Procter, LLP in Boston.
For more information about Inverness Medical Innovations, please visit our website at www.invernessmedical.com.
Inverness Medical Innovations manufactures and sells products for the women's health market, and is engaged in the business of developing, manufacturing, and marketing advanced medical device technologies. The Company is presently exploring new opportunities for its proprietary electrochemical and other technologies in a variety of consumer oriented applications including immuno-diagnostics with a focus on women's health and cardiology. The Company's women's health and nutritional products are distributed to consumers through established retail distribution networks such as Wal-Mart, Walgreens and CVS. Inverness is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. |
