When the world’s best-selling drug goes off patent, you know it’s big news for pharma companies everywhere. At Ranbaxy India, though, the drama was magnified. For three years, it had been wrangling with the US Food and Drug Administration over charges of falsified data and quality issues. And as the deadline for the expiry of Pfizer’s Lipitor patent neared, the Indian company was no closer to getting approval for its generic version of the cholesterol-lowering drug.