A U.S. court rejected the petition of Apotex Group, trying to prevent Israeli pharmaceutical manufacturer Teva from the exclusive 180 days marketing for its own generic version of Pravachol, a cholesterol-reducing drug manufactured originally by Bristol-Myers Squibb Company.
The petition for injunction was filed by the Canadian company to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Last week, the American Food and Drug Administration decided that Teva should be awarded the exclusive marketing period of its drug, a market valued at USD 1.3 billion dollars.
The FDA's approval came in response to Apotex' petition, which stressed that Teva's marketing exclusivity began in July 2004 and has therefore ended.
Pravachol sales experienced a sharp decline as a result of competition in the drug market, where in the last quarter sales diminished by 18 percent, to USD 584 million.
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