LONDON (Bloomberg) - Eisai Co., the maker of the world's best-selling Alzheimer's medicine, won permission to appeal a UK court decision that upheld government funding limits for the pill.

The Court of Appeals will permit the challenge, which the Tokyo-based drugmaker and partner Pfizer Inc. filed at the end of September. The Japanese company failed to convince a High Court judge in August that the agency that advises the UK's National Health Service violated procedures in deciding its Aricept medicine should not be funded for mild Alzheimer's disease.

The advisory agency, known as the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence, last year said Aricept, Novartis AG's Exelon and H. Lundbeck A/S's Ebixa did not offer enough benefit to be made available to all Alzheimer's sufferers. NICE's decisions influence how the health service spends its £12 billion ($24 billion) annual drug budget. High Court Justice Linda Dobbs declined to say the NICE ruling was unfair because the agency didn't fully disclose its methods.

"We are delighted that the court has granted us permission to appeal the decision of the High Court, which supported NICE's lack of transparency over the way that cost effectiveness has been calculated," Paul Hooper, executive vice-president of Eisai's European unit, said today in an e-mailed statement.