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Some patent cliffs can't be seen

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

A post on Motley Fool made the "drug patent situation" one of facile predictability:

The patent cliff that almost every drugmaker is facing is the dark side of developing blockbuster drugs. Be it Pfizer's (NYSE: PFE) Lipitor, Eli Lilly's (NYSE: LLY) Zyprexa, or AstraZeneca's (NYSE: AZN) Nexium, it's going to hurt when the drugmakers start to face generic competition. Fortunately, investors can see the patents coming and the loss of revenue won't be a shock, unlike when Merck (NYSE: MRK) had to suddenly pull Vioxx off the market prematurely.

With the cliff in plain sight, share prices will be determined by what the companies do between now and their rapidly approaching fall.

With Hatch-Waxman litigations, the cliff is anything but in plain sight. And deals can draw scrutiny.

See for example

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/02/la-times-editorial-goes-after-hatch.html

Full post as published by IPBiz on April 09, 2009 (boomark / email).