INTERNATIONAL DRUG house Pfizer could pay millions of dollars in cost and compensation to local distributors Medimpex and LASCO if it loses an appeal to quash a ruling made by the Supreme Court that its patented medication Amlodipine (Norvasc) is invalid.

Amlodipine (Norvasc) is used to treat high blood pressure, protecting patients from the devastating complications of severe congestive heart failure, stroke, renal failure and other vascular complications due to hypertension.

The three companies have been in the courts since 2002. An injunction was granted against Medimpex and LASCO, which were forced to take the drug off the market in 2005.

In a landmark ruling on April 29, Justice Roy Jones ruled that the Letters of Patent 3247 issued in Jamaica in respect to Salts of Amlodipine to Maurice Courtenay Robinson (an attorney who applied on his own behalf under the Patents Act 1857) are not valid and subsisting for the reason that Letters of Patent 18266 for the same substance filed in Egypt on March 31, 1987, expired on March 31, 1997.

However, the judgment was stayed until the case was heard in the Court of Appeal, according to the attorney representing LASCO, Vincent Chen of Chen, Green and Company.

Hope for successful appeal!