The legal battles in China for Pfizer show no signs of relenting despite a ruling that the Viagra drug’s active ingredient sildenafil citrate has been confirmed by a Chinese court as belonging to Pfizer alone. Now the legal battles are focusing on the user rights to the popular and common Chinese translation for the Viagra impotence drug.

In China Viagra is known as Wei Ge or literally as “mighty brother” however another local drug company called Guangzhou Welman has already registered the name for its own products. In China Pfizer have the rights to the name Wan Ai Ke and that is what appears on the packaging but in normal talk and among most Chinese people it is called Wei Ge. The drug company Pfizer having established properly in China that it is the sole owner of the sildenafil compound is now keen to establish its rights to the Viagra name and all of its variants in China.

In December the courts in China said that Guangzhou Welman should not use the Wei Ge name as it was the common name for Viagra but have changed their mind following an appeal as they said that Guangzhou Welman had registered the name correctly according to the proper procedures and so they had doe nothing wrong.

So this puts Pfizer in a complicated position as it now own the complete rights to Viagra in China but not to its most commonly used name. This will have big implications to the way that Pfizer markets their erectile dysfunction drug in China.

Pfizer has been plagued by legal problems with the use of sildenafil citrate in China, as the patent was only formally recognised by China a few months ago. In the meantime millions fake Viagra tablets were made by properly licenced Chinese drug companies and despite the patent ruling much of the world’s fake Viagra continues to come from illegal Chinese factories.