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Biotech / Medical : ICOS Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Edscharp who wrote (738)	9/8/1999 3:32:00 PM
From: jk28	Respond to of 1139

Lilly Seeks to Overturn Pfizer UK Impotence Patent London, Sept. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Eli Lilly & Co., the maker of the antidepressant Prozac, is challenging one of Pfizer Inc.'s U.K. patents related to the blockbuster impotence drug Viagra to clear the way for its own entry in the market. Derek Anthony, a spokesman for Lilly in the U.K., said his company is fighting a patent that Pfizer has on ''Viagra-like substances'' used to treat sexual dysfunction. The case should come to court sometime next year, he said. Indianapolis-based Lilly, the sixth-biggest U.S. drugmaker, is developing a competitor to Viagra along with Icos Corp., a biotechnology company that ranks Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates as its biggest shareholder. The broad Pfizer patent could present an obstacle to Icos' and Lilly's plans to join the potential multibillion-dollar impotence market. ''Lilly is seeking the revocation of Pfizer's patent,'' Anthony said. Andy Burrows, a Pfizer spokesman in the U.K., said the court fight -- no matter who wins -- won't affect the marketing of Viagra itself. Instead, the dispute centers on a broad patent related to the development of drugs similar to Viagra, he said. Pfizer, the second-biggest U.S. drugmaker, believes the patent is ''sound,'' he said. ''It's a normal type of business practice in the pharmaceutical arena,'' Burrows said. ''You are obliged to try to protect your inventions with as broad a patent sweep as possible.'' He declined to predict whether the court would uphold Pfizer's patent in the case, reported yesterday by the U.K. newspaper Sunday Business. Because of the U.S. Labor Day holiday, shares of Pfizer, Lilly and Bothell, Washington-based Icos won't trade in the U.S. today. Pfizer's Viagra, first approved in the U.S. in March last year, was the first pill for male impotence. The drug had a record-breaking introduction and is on track to rake in at least $1 billion a year for New York-based Pfizer, analysts say. Sep/06/1999 11:33