Ranbaxy launches generic Lipitor in Denmark

LONDON, Feb 12 (Reuters) India's Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd , fighting to overturn Pfizer Inc's exclusivity on cholesterol fighter Lipitor, has launched a generic form of the world's best-selling medicine in Denmark.

Chief executive Malvinder Singh said on Monday the move marked the beginning of the company's efforts to bring affordable atorvastatin, as Lipitor is known generically, to patients in Europe and other parts of the world.

Ranbaxy's version of atorvastatin is already available in India and some other emerging markets but Denmark -- an estimated million market -- is the first Western country to get the product.

Pfizer is fighting the Indian firm's plans to sell copycat Lipitor and in many cases has seen off its attempts to invalidate the central patent on the drug in courtrooms around the world.

In the United States, for example, a U.S. appeals court last year affirmed the validity of the basic patent on the drug, which runs until March 2010.

REUTERS KR DB2242