Effexor, the best-selling anti-depression drug in the world (sales) may now have a new competitor. In what could happen more and more, an Indian pharmaceutical company has applied to the FDA to sell a drug in pill form instead of capsule.

The dinger: the new drug, which will be sold as a generic, will have the same active ingridient at Wyeth's $3.7 billion-a-year Effexor drug. Think that's a threat? Sure -- big-time.

The difference here that makes this potential new anti-depressant such a big deal is because it comes in an extended-release tablet as opposed to a capsule (which is under Wyeth patent protection until 2010). Nothing like finding a loophole for new drug sales, huh?

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Wyeth has been ordered to pay $134.5 million as the result of a lawsuit filed recently by three women in Nevada who believe the pharma giant's hormone replacement therapy drug caused them to develop breast cancer.

This is now Wyeth's largest product liability amount, and the company faces another 5,300 lawsuits in courts across the country. Ahh, the joys of being a large, national pharmaceutical giant these days.

A law professor at Seton Hall believes the jury may have taken the plaintiff's version of the story verbatim while not taking in Wyeth's version all that much. Could that be the result of so much bad publicity in recent years when it comes to negative side effects of prescription drugs? Perhaps.

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