Viagra Chinese Court Ruling

In a long awaited ruling in China a judge has ruled that 2 local drug companies must stop producing and selling locally made generic versions of the all famous wonder erectile dysfunction drug Viagra made by Pfizer. The legal battle that has been going on many years now in a variety of different courts was finally won by Pfizer last year but the actual test of the ruling had not been established until this recent case. The court ruled that one of the companies was to pay almost £20,000 in damages for the infringement of the Pfizer Viagra patent which clearly has set a precedent for other potential legal battles in the future.

The companies namely the Beijing Health New Concept Pharmacy and the Lianhuan Pharmaceutical Co were both told that they must stop selling and producing sildenafil citrate pills (otherwise known as Viagra) with immediate effect.

The fine sounds pretty tiny when you consider that sales of Viagra are close to one billion pounds sterling every years and the Chinese fake have been responsible for that figure being considerably less than it could be.

Nevertheless the ruling has set a precedent for the future and should really help Pfizer to crack the impotence and erectile dysfunction market in China. Many millions of Chinese men suffer from erectile dysfunction and with local companies under the risk of being fined by local courts Pfizer should grow market share with the real versions of Viagra.

At present it is estimated that only about 10% of the ‘Viagra’ sold in China is genuine and that the rest is made locally illegally. If Pfizer can even get to a figure of 50% for genuine Viagra sales they will be making a massive headway into the market and greatly boost their profits.

The ruling has also set a precedent for the sales of other erectile dysfunction drugs made by foreign companies like Cialis and Levitra as well as the hundreds of other western drugs that the Chinese drug companies copy every year.