Viagra hit by Chinese ruling
China, with the one of the world’s oldest and most developed impotence potion markets, is almost a closed shop to the company, which has failed to make any significant inroads.
As a result, Viagra knock-offs are more widely available that the real thing. Now Beijing’s State Intellectual Property Office is refusing to grant a patent to Pfizer for sildenafil citrate, the main ingredient in the popular impotence drug.
More than 600 workers are employed at Pfizer’s Ringaskiddy plant, where the bulk of the sildenafil citrate which is used in Viagra is manufactured.
Yesterday, the New York-based drug maker revealed that the State Intellectual Property Office has sided with Chinese generic-drug makers in their challenge to Pfizer’s patent for sildenafil citrate.
Pfizer is to appeal the decision and stressed that its Chinese patent, which covers the use of the drug to treat erectile dysfunction, would remain in effect until the issue is resolved.
Pfizer has been marketing Viagra in China since it was awarded a patent there in September 2001.
Viagra sales in China are miniscule, hampered by the Ministry of Health’s classification of the drug as a controlled substance. This bans advertising and limits the drug’s distribution by prescription to only a small number of hospitals.
Pfizer has to contend with rampant counterfeiting in China, where fake Viagra is much more widely available than the real thing.
At one sex shop in Beijing’s Sanlitun bar district, shelves are filled with knock-off Viagra and other products that market themselves as sildenafil citrate.
Pfizer declines to disclose sales in China, but worldwide Viagra sales last year rose 8% to $1.88 billion (€1.52 billion).
Other countries have disallowed Pfizer patents for Viagra. In 2001, the patent was disallowed in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela over a different issue. The company is appealing those decisions.
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