The world's largest seller of pharmaceuticals, Glaxo Wellcome of UK, lost the latest round of a protracted legal battle in the US. A North Carolina court ruling on July 5 gave the green signal to Novopharm, the Canadian drugs company, to retail a generic version of Zantac when Glaxo's patent on this version of the drug expires in July 1997. The UK group had contended that Novopharm could not have developed the generic version of Zantac without violating a patent taken out on a second version of Zantac. Last year, Glaxo had netted US $3.4 billion from sales of the drug.