Now It’s Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited’s Turn to Defend Brand-Name Drug Patents

Tables are Turned: Teva Pharmaceutical Industries mostly makes generic drugs, but now finds itself acting like Big Pharma — defending the patent for a brand-name drug in order to stave off the threat of generic competition, the WSJ reports. Mylan and Momenta are challenging the validity of Teva’s patents for the multiple-sclerosis drug Copaxone, hoping to sell generic copies before the patents expire in 2014 and 2015, the paper says. So far, the FDA hasn’t granted Teva’s requests to require separate clinical trials of the proposed generic versions.