CHICAGO--Pfizer, the world's biggest drugmaker, said on Thursday it had filed lawsuits against 18 Web sites, charging them with selling illegal versions of its best selling cholesterol medicine, Lipitor.
The New York-based drug maker said it is suing the operators to combat Web selling of unapproved copies of Lipitor, marketed as "generic Lipitor."
The suits over Lipitor, the first prescription drug topping $10 billion in annual sales, follow similar actions filed in April and May over the drug. Pfizer has also gone after sales of counterfeit versions of its impotence drug Viagra.
The most recent suits were filed in the U.S. District Court in Delaware.
The suits accuse 10 sites of patent infringement and seek injunctions against further sale of the products.
The company said it tested the sites by ordering the fake Lipitor and found that in two instances, none of the active compound was in the product. It said it notified the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of those results.
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