GLAXOSMITHKLINE has made headway in a US court battle to prevent other pharmaceutical companies making cheap copies of one of its top-selling drugs.

A Philadelphia court found against GSK in only one of four challenges brought by Apotex, a Canadian generic drug maker, to the patents protecting its leading antidepressant, Paxil.

The company is keen to stop companies from making cheaper copies of Paxil as the drug represents annual sales of £2 billion.

Glaxo has forecast earnings growth of Paxil of at lest ten per cent last year and nine per cent this year on the assumption that the drug is defended from generic competition.

GSK said the court had found in its favour on the core drug composition, Paxil, returned a split decision on two others and ruled against the company on a fourth.

A full court hearing on the first three patent challenges will go ahead later this year.

Spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline, Siobhan Lavelle, said the company was going to appeal against the summary judgment on the fourth straight away.

Miss Lavelle said the US rulings were unlikely to affect the company's proposal to make 400-redundancies at the Ulverston factory over the next two years.

"We produce anti-bacterials at the Ulverston site so the rulings will not affect the site as Paxil is not produced there," she said.

The drugs giant is blaming the proposed redundancies on major price competition on key products. The company entered a 90-day consultation period at the beginning of October. A final decision over the redundancies is expected by the end of January.

January 15, 2003 09:00