Glaxo's CEO must answer questions in AIDS drug patent piracy case

A California federal court has ruled that GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) Chief Executive Officer, Jean-Pierre Garnier, must answer further questions in a deposition in a patent piracy lawsuit brought against the British drug giant over GSK's patent for AZT (Retrovir), the first AIDS drug.

The case was filed in July 2002 by AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest AIDS organization in the US, which operates free AIDS treatment clinics in the US, Africa, Central America and Asia. The legal action challenges the legitimacy of GSK's claims on the patent for AZT and other derivative AIDS drugs. As part of the legal proceedings, attorneys for AHF deposed Garnier in late January 2005 in Philadelphia, however, the CEO of the multi-national drug giant left questions unanswered during that deposition and AHF's attorneys petitioned the court to be able to continue Garnier's deposition. In late March, United States District Court Magistrate Judge Charles Eick ruled in favor of AHF's motion to continue with Garnier's deposition (United States District Court for Central District of California, Western Division Case No. CV-03-02792 TJH ex).

"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 AIDS Healthcare Foundation. "GSK's lawyers have repeatedly called our AZT patent piracy lawsuit 'frivolous' and 'without merit,' yet they also stall and try to block our search for answers at every junction. 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. As a result, GSK now controls 40% of the lucrative U.S. 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 and offer patients the convenience of two-in-one and three-in-one therapeutic drug combinations in one pill.