Menszana Sues City, Cognivia
4:15pm 01/05/270 by Alwhin Copi
Boutique pharmaceutical firm Menszana has filed a lawsuit against the city and its heavyweight competitor, Cognivia, claiming that Cognivia is unfairly using its massive resources to offer free drugs to the city under the Spearhead Scheme. As a result, Menszana attorneys say the market for competing drugs has bottomed out, and in time the company will have no choice but to file for bankruptcy and shut down.
"The city's agreement with Cognivia under the Spearhead Scheme is directly aimed at putting smaller pharmaceutical businesses such as Menszana out of business, which will ultimately stifle scientific innovation in the industry," said Menszana Senior Counsel Marvin Torino. "Cognivia is leveraging their massive sales of casual cognitive enhancers to underwrite a scheme that will lose them billions of lecks. ... Smaller medical pharmaceutical companies can't compete with those resources, but why should the city do business with us when they can get alternative products from the competition for free?"
Cognivia spokesman Lawrence Kim rejected the lawsuit as baseless. "Cognivia is reaching into our pockets for a net positive result to the community," he said. "We are confident that the court system will reject these claims out of hand."
The lawsuit is demanding an immediate halt to Cognivia's Spearhead Scheme, plus 12 billion lecks in compensation and punitive damages. Initial hearings in the case have not yet been scheduled. Sources from within Menszana indicate that the lawsuit is merely a tactical move, with the company ultimately seeking leverage with the Council to quickly gain testing approval for a new medical device that will analyse and interpret complex neural activity.
The Spearhead Scheme was announced at the end of March. Under the program, Cognivia is providing all medically necessary medical drugs from its product line to city health authorities for free.