Teva Victorious Over Novartis in Generics Case

In a much anticipated decision, a U.S. District court for New Jersey denied a Novartis (NVS) motion for a preliminary injunction against Teva (TEVA) selling its generic version of Lotrel, a blood pressure treatment drug.

In reaching its opinion, the court found that Novartis was not likely to succeed in its allegations of patent infringement, Teva said. Teva announced that it will resume shipping its generic version immediately. Sales of Lotrel were approximately $1.4 billion in the United States.

This is no small victory for TEVA, as analysts think that this drug can add between $180-$210 million to sales, or about 9-12 cents a share. This, coupled with the rest of the pipeline, makes Teva look poised to be a market leader for some time. A few weeks ago, I posted that the feeling was that Teva would win the case, and indeed it did. This is clearly another in a long line of blows that have been dealt to Big-Pharma, and a trend that I expect to continue for the foreseeable future.

Disclosure: The author’s fund is long TEVA as of June 11, 2007.

TEVA 1-yr chart