Pfizer finally beats back the generics -- for now

Posted Mar 21st 2007 3:00PM by Douglas McIntyre
Filed under: Industry, Law, Competitive Strategy, Pfizer (PFE), Teva Pharm Indus ADR (TEVA)

Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and the other Big Pharma companies keep taking a pasting as their drugs come "off patent" and are greeted by competition from generic drug makers. As really big drugs like Lipitor move into that pool, the old line drug firms could lose billions of dollars in revenue.

But, the champagne was open at Pfizer today. It won a court case against generic giant Teva (NASDAQ:TEVA) over rights to the painkiller Celebrex, which is the world's top arthritis pain-killer. Teva had tried to get the FDA to approve a version for it to sell. Pfizer said this would violate its intellectual property.

Celebrex now belongs to Pfizer until 2015. The more money it can make off current drugs like this, the better the chance that it can invest in R&D to create new drugs for its pipeline. Otherwise, the company is toast along with its investors.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

Tags: Big Pharma, BigPharma, Celebrex, Lipitor, PFE, TEVA