WORLD leading pharmaceutical firms Pfizer Inc and Allergan PLC last week announced a US$160 billion merger, that has ignited concerns about drug prices and choices around the world.

New York-based Pfizer, best known in Jamaica for producing and distributing the erectile dysfunction drug, Viagra, is merging with Allergan, an Irish firm famous for Botox, which erases face wrinkles, in a deal which would end up with Pfizer moving from New York to Ireland and tax benefits worth up to US$30 billion.

There are concerns that the merger could increase drug prices and reduce drug choices, creating additional funding problems for developing countries like Jamaica, whose public health budgets are incapable of keeping up with the health needs of citizens.

The concerns may even become exaggerated in countries like Jamaica, which have actually experienced Pfizer’s aggressive and unfriendly competitive spirit.

And Jamaicans would have all right to fear the merger, based on the legal battle between Pfizer and Jamaican pharmaceutical firms Lasco and Medimpex which although concluded last year at the level of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) in London, has left a bitter taste in the mouths of consumers as well as local distributors like Lasco.

Lasco has “complained bitterly” over the year about Pfizer’s high-handedness and “intimidatory behaviour”, in pursuing an infringement the US company accused it of in 2002. Although the court issue was resolved in mid-2014 in favour of the local firms, there is still the matter of over J$1 billion in costs and damages owing to them.

In addition, thousands of Jamaicans who had been deprived of the hypertension tablets laced with Salts of Amlodipine, and their families, believe that it was unfair that an injunction obtained by Pfizer against Lasco and Medimpex distributing their version of the tablets at a more accessibly and cheaper rate, during the trial, may have caused numerous deaths which could have been avoided.

Pfizer sought approximately three times the actual loss for unlawful use the patented product which, intriguingly, was said to have been invented by an attorney-at-law residing in Jamaica at the time, Maurice Courtenay Robinson.

The infringement, according to Pfizer, was that the local firms were importing, selling, supplying and distributing to pharmacies in Jamaica, drugs which have, as an active ingredient, “Salts of Amlodipine”.

Robinson applied for the patent in August, 1992 under Section 3 of the Patent Act, on the basis that he was in possession of an invention of (Salts of Amlodipine) which, on the basis of communications from Pfizer, substantiated that he was the “true and first inventor thereof”, and that the same was not in use by any other persons to the best of his knowledge and belief.

No reason was given to the court why some 10 years elapsed before he received the patent from the Governor General. However on January 22, 2002, he was granted the Letters Patent for “Salts of Amlodipine” by King’s House.

On March 12, 2002, Robinson filed the grant with the Registrar of Companies in Jamaica, and on March 26, 2002 he assigned all his rights and interests to Pfizer Limited of Ramsgate Road, Kent, Britain.

At the time, Pfizer manufactured and sold a much more expensive drug in Jamaica under the name “Norvasc”, containing “Salts of Amlodipine/Amlodipine Besylate”. Lasco imported and sold in Jamaica “Las Amlodipine” which also contained Amlodipine Besylate, insisting that it had no need for a licence, since the patent had lapsed in 1997.

The court eventually concluded that Pfizer’s case for an infringement of its patent had failed, for the reason that the patent issued in Jamaica to Robinson was not valid and subsisting, because the original patent filed in Egypt in 1987 expired in 1997 prior to the grant of the local patent.

The Supreme Court on April 29, 2009, refused Pfizer’s application for a permanent injunction and other orders, and ruled in favour of the local firms with costs to be agreed or taxed.

At the time of the judgment, the court also ordered an enquiry as to the damages suffered by Lasco and Medimpex, as a result of the interlocutory injunction granted to Pfizer under their undertaking in damages. Pfizer eventually took the case to the local Appeal Court and the Privy Council in London and lost again.

But, even as firms like Lasco insist on continuing the search for less costly and more effective drugs for local consumers, there is a fear that the Pfizer/Allergan merger could produce an invincible pharmaceutical empire, threatening the availability of cheaper and more accessible generic drugs.

The Associated Press (AP) last week quoted President of US advocacy group, Consumer Watchdog, Jamie Court, as suggesting that “certain patients are going to not only see elevated prices, but potentially a loss of choice”.

“Even though this is (going to be) a foreign company, it’s actually going to create a tremendous problem for all purchasers in the US market,” Court warned about the merger.