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TEVA RECEIVES FAVORABLE RULING FROM JAPANESE PATENT OFFICE REGARDING PRAVASTATIN

October 17, 2005

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA -- News) announced today that trial examiners in the Japanese Patent Office have granted judgment in favor of Teva with regard to Sankyo's Patent No. 3463875 in Japan. Following a trial last August, the Patent Office found Sankyo's patent relating to pravastatin free of epipravastatin to be invalid based on prior intellectual property applications filed by Teva in Japan. The favorable ruling is the second decision regarding this product that has been granted to Teva this year. In April, the Japanese Patent Office invalidated Sankyo's Patent No. 3236282 in Japan, which relates to a process for the extraction of pravastatin with iso-butyl acetate. This decision was also based on earlier filed patent applications by Teva relating to pravastatin. As noted by the trial examiners, this request by Teva for invalidation of Sankyo's patent represented the first time that a generic drug company was challenging the patents of a brand name company in Japan.

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