Pfizer: Civil Suits for Drug Counterfeiters

With the millions he made peddling fake Viagra over the Net, Martin Hickman bought a diamond-studded Rolex, a Bentley, and a beachside villa on Spain's Costa del Sol. Pfizer (PFZ) aims to make sure the Briton never gets to enjoy them.

The spoils of Hickman's crimes helped settle a trademark infringement lawsuit brought by the world's biggest drugmaker. The case is an example of a new approach Pfizer is taking to battle counterfeiting of prescription drugs, an industry scourge that's almost doubled in the past five years to around $75 billion, according to the New York-based Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. Pfizer, whose erectile dysfunction pill Viagra is one of the most copied drugs, once relied on local authorities and criminal courts to hunt down and prosecute offenders. Now it's taken matters into its own hands.