The Pfizer Empire Strikes Back
Written by Jamie Stowe | Monday, 12 July 2010 | There is 1 comment
worldwide campaign to hunt down the manufacturers and sellers of fake Viagra
Pfizer wants everybody to know that they mean business! Rather than sitting back and making half hearted efforts to encourage local police enforcement agents around the world to arrest individuals selling fake Viagra, they are putting their money where their mouth is and launching civil lawsuits for breach of trademark and asking for punitive damages so that the criminals end up in prison unable to pay their fines.
The latest success for Pfizer involves Mr. Martin Hickman who was living a multimillion pound lifestyle with a villa in Costa Del Sol, a flat in Chelsea and a whole range of luxury cars. Instead of just being happy to shut down his illegal websites selling fake Viagra, Pfizer in conjunction with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency have managed to seize all of his assets in the UK and said they won’t stop going after him until they have exhausted every remedy.
Previously the only policy for Pfizer had been to tip-off the police in order to encourage criminal prosecution but while they are still committed to doing this they now seek authorisation by UK judges to mount their own investigations and seizures of fake stock.
One of the reasons for Pfizer’s change of attitude to counterfeit Viagra is because the market has grown so quickly over the last few years. Statistics coming from the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest based in New York claim that the worldwide fake prescription drug industry is now worth around $75 billion up from around $35 billion five years ago.
In its worldwide campaign to hunt down the manufacturers and sellers of counterfeit Viagra they have taken on a whole range of different people with law enforcement skills such as FBI agents, narcotics experts from Turkey, customs officials in Hong Kong and individuals with links to organized crime. According to Pfizer’s own figures they have prevented the sale of around 60 million fake impotence tablets over the last six years worth in the region of $900 million.
Pfizer also said that in the United Kingdom the civil legal actions are netting them hard cash in punitive damages as well as reducing the amount of operators online.
