Sanofi chops 70 jobs in Canada

To underscore its complaints that the Canadian government is allowing generic competition to encroach on markets for products still under patent protection, Sanofi-Aventis announced that it is cutting 70 positions out of its operations there. "Our patent protection candle is being burned at both ends," said Hugh O'Neill, Sanofi's CEO in Canada. "It takes us longer to get our innovative patented medicines on the market at the outset and the lack of intellectual property protection threatens to cut our patent protection short at the other end. We can't ignore this reality anymore, which runs counter to current trends in large industrialized markets." Sanofi release