AIDS Group Asks Court to Stop AZT Patent Defense

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation announced Thursday that it has asked a U.S. federal court to stop British drug company GlaxoSmithKline from defending its patent on AZT. AHF has filed a lawsuit against the company alleging patent fraud and price gouging.

The largest provider of AIDS care in the United States, the nonprofit AHF began barring GlaxoSmithKline's sales reps from its clinics earlier this year. AHF claims the company was selling AIDS drugs in the developing world for twice as much as other drug companies.

Last summer, AHF filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate GlaxoSmithKline's patent on AZT, the cornerstone of the firm's top-selling antiretroviral drugs Combivir and Trizivir. The suit was later amended to ask that patents on Combivir (lamivudine, zidovudine) and Trizivir (zidovudine, lamivudine, abacavir) also be invalidated.

The foundation alleges Burroughs Wellcome falsely claimed its scientists had discovered AZT and its use against HIV in 1986 in order to secure a patent. Glaxo had acquired Burroughs Wellcome before its merger with SmithKline Beecham. AZT was created in 1964 as a possible cancer drug.

"They lied to the patent office in the 1980s about discovering AZT's ability to treat AIDS, and in doing so secured exclusive rights to manufacture it," said AHF President Michael Weinstein. "AZT was developed with federal assistance in the 1960s, and the National Institutes of Health tested it for HIV use in the 1980s, but Glaxo secured patents on the substance in the 1980s and locked competitors out. They then priced AZT at thirty-two times the cost of manufacture, a practice repeated with every new AIDS drug since then."

"We believe that there should not be a patent on these drugs, and that the market should be open for competition," said AHF General Counsel Tom Myers.

GlaxoSmithKline will defend itself against this lawsuit, said a company spokesperson. She called the suit frivolous and noted Burroughs Wellcome's claim to inventorship of AZT had been established in many lawsuits during the 1990s.

Preliminary arguments in the case are set for March 10, 2003.

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