Manila Bulletin – May 15, 2007

Government-owned Philippine Interna­tional Trading Corporation (PITC) yester­day asked the Intellectual Patent Office to cancel the patent it issued to Pfizer Limited (UK) covering the pharmaceutical product amlodipine besylate marketed under the brand name Norvasc.

In a 20-page petition, the PITC claimed that Philippine Patent Number 24348 en­titled "Improvements in Pharmaceutically Acceptable Salts of Amlodipine," invented by Edward Davison and James Ingram Wells and assigned to Pfizer Limited (UK), is not new nor does it involve an inventive step for non-obviousness.

According to PITC, Pfizer desires to double-patent the same inventions.

In this case, Pfizer PH Patent No. 18785 already covered "Amlodipine" together with pharmaceutically-accepted acid salts. This already encompasses the salt besylate. The petition added that Pfizer, cannot claim a new invention or patent over a new prod­uct simply because it had changed the salt for the molecule "amlodipine." Such change does not affect the therapeutic and medicinal treatment or effect of the drug. Clearly, then, "amlodipine besylate" is not new or novel as this was already included in respondent's own prior art covered by PH Patent No. 18785.

The PITC also added that only active moiety, amlodipine, in the molecule am­lodipine besulate is responsible for the therapeutic and medicinal treatment or effect of the drug. The change in the salt is a natural, logical, and ordinary process or development of the molecule amlodipine and does not change the drug amlodipine, or for that matter, the invention, itself.

By seeking to patent a product which is neither new nor inventive, respondent ef­fectively would like to indefinitely extend its exclusive rights over a product whose expiration has long expired. Otherwise, such unjustified patent will necessarily disturb public order and will manifestly be contrary to morals.

The petitioner asked the IPO to take judicial notice of the undeniable effect of patents, worse, if it is frivolous, on the high cost of medicine. Such frivolous patents are veritable traps for the public and the com­munity whom the courts of justice, includ­ing this the IPO, must protect against abuse and imposition.

On April 2, 1987, respondent Pfizer Lim­ited (UK) filed an application for Philippine Patent for its alleged invention "Improve­ment in Pharmaceutically Acceptable Salts of Amlodipine" ("Besylate Invention"), invented by Edward Davison and James Ingram Wells.

Said patent application was based on a Foreign Patent Application Number 8608335 filed by respondent in the United Kingdom on April 4, 1986 (UK Foreign Patent).