And, Lipitor is the first of many blockbuster drugs to come off patent: e.g.
It's likely that a drug that targets the same condition already went off patent.
With glyphosate going off patent in September 2000, generic manufacturers were anxious to strike a deal.
Meanwhile, an entire pharmacopoeia of medicines have gone off patent and fallen out of use.
Multibillion dollar revenue producers go off patent protection with nothing new waiting in the wings.
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Plenty of other firms have paid off patent-holders in the face of legal action.
Four of its big drugs are going off patent this year, such as Pepcid, a stomach ailment remedy.
Pharmaceutical companies, he says, are seeing similar issues, cutting costs as flagship drugs begin to come off patent.
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Many are coming off patent and being distributed and produced, in large part, by the generic drug makers.
When the drug goes off patent, that exclusive right vanishes and the drug loses much of its value.
Medicines that will soon go off patent or didn't finish clinical trials could also be options for development.
Plavix and Singulair both go off patent over the next couple years, ending the age of mass-market medicines completely.
Because the drug is off patent, the drugmaker has to deal with competition and generic versions of the drug.
Even if IMPROVE-IT shows that Vytorin is vastly superior to simvastatin, Zetia is due to come off patent in 2016.
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Over the past three years its American Depositary Receipts more than doubled as an increasing number of drugs came off patent.
When Lipitor goes off patent in the U.S. later this year, it will retain billions of dollars in sales in other countries.
For example, atorvastatin and simvastatin are both equally effective, as far as we currently know, and simvastatin came off patent six years ago.
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In a nutshell, generic drugs which are off patent that are costly to produce, but usually cheap to purchase, are generally the medications in short supply.
The problem for Pfizer and its peers is not just that older drugs are going off patent, but that new ones are not making up the difference.
With waves of blockbuster drugs going off patent, and problems over getting their successors to market, tough questions about prices are the last thing drug companies want.
After a spate of big sellers went off patent, Bristol decided to leave the heavy marketing to Pfizer (nyse: PFE - news - people ).
When a drug goes off patent, its worth decreases dramatically.
He returns to Novartis as it goes through what pharma insiders call a patent cliff: Novartis sales will be flat this year, the company said, as Diovan goes off patent.
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In the year before Lipitor went off patent, Pfizer shares generally lagged the broader market, only to rise steadily afterward, as the company announced various strategies to offset the lost income.
It may be helped by a bit of bad fortune for Merck: Zocor goes off patent in 2006, and it may lose some share if the company stops promoting it aggressively.
Compared to the older, more traditional non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, it's almost surely at least as effective and at least as safe, but it's off patent, so it's not being pushed the same way.
The Graedons noted that while the active ingredient of the drug goes off patent, the pharmaceutical chemistry behind the extended delivery system may still be the intellectual property of the brand-name manufacturer.
In August U.S. drug regulators awarded Dr. Reddy's a so-called 180-day exclusive period for the 40-milligram generic version of Eli Lilly's Prozac, which had just come off patent (Barr Labs gained the license for the much-better-selling 20-milligram dosage).
But other medicines do, particularly when there is a new entrant being sold by a drug company that is better or, as has happened in heart failure, when evidence about medicines has emerged after they have gone off patent.
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Blockbuster cancer treatment Taxol has been eroded by generic competition in the U.S.--although international sales are strong--and many fear that the company's Glucophage diabetes franchise could also be eaten by generic drugs when flagship Glucophage IR goes off patent.
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