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news.A California federal court has ruled that GlaxoSmithKline's CEO, Jean-Pierre Garnier, must answer further questions in a deposition in a patent piracy lawsuit over the patent for AZT, the first AIDS drug.
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The case was filed in July 2002 by AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest AIDS organization in the US. The legal action challenges the legitimacy of GSK’s claims on the patent for AZT (Retrovir) and other derivative AIDS drugs.
“We are grateful for the court’s recent ruling that allows us to continue with our legal deposition of Mr Garnier,” said Michael Weinstein, president of AHF. “We look forward now to moving ahead with our legal challenge to GSK’s stranglehold on the patent for AZT – a drug it neither invented nor proved its efficacy against HIV – and the patents for GSK’s other derivative AIDS drugs.”
AZT was first created with funding from the National Institutes of Health in 1964 as a possible cancer drug, but GSK obtained the patent on the drug and then priced both it and certain derivative drugs well above competitive rates, according to AHF.
As a result, GSK now controls 40% of the lucrative US AIDS drug market, with a current worldwide market for its AIDS medications estimated at approximately $2 billion dollars annually. Combivir and Trizivir, Glaxo’s best selling AIDS drugs today, contain AZT.