Teva has said it will make a payment of $70 million to drug major Pfizer in order to settle litigation between the two companies over two medicines.
The Israeli company said the payment would resolve the two disputes, which relate to sales of generic versions of Pfizer anticancer drug Idamycin (idarubicin) and antibiotic Zithromax (azithromycin).
The terms of the deal mean that Teva will continue to sell its copycat versions of the two products. It also gets an option to sell a clone of another Pfizer drug, the cancr treatment Ellence (epirubicin), prior to the expiration of patent protection in the USA next August.
Zithromax added $1.8 billion to Pfizer’s coffers last year, but saw its sales fall off in 2006 after the start of generic competition from teva and other companies. Idamycin is a minor product for the drugmaker – too small for it sales to be broken out in financial results – while Ellence brought in $236 million in the first nine months of 2006, down 13% compared to the same period of 2005.
