The book.."A Night to Remember" (later a classic movie)..Is about the immediate events on the RMS Titanic. On April 14th and 15th in 1912. The opinion for many decades was the Titanic struck an iceberg which caused a large "hole" in the hull..What was learned from the later finding of the actual hull..was there was only a small 12 to 13 foot gash on the starboard side. This put a strain on the surrounding hull which was held together. Not by "best/best rivets, but by best rivets in the bow and stern which were cast iron and had areas of slag..
In the book the crucial point is when the captain of the Titanic calls the ship designer Thomas Andrews who is a passenger to ask him if the Titanic might sink....This is within minutes of the collision..By that time the Titanic has taken 13,000 tons of water and this is flooding at a rate of (7 tons/second). The lower portion of the Titanic is divided into 15 compartments designed to prevent mass flooding, but as the hull takes on water it pulls the involved compartment down and this allows an overflow into the next compartment..and so one..Since the Ship can not bale at the rate the ship is taking on water the captain asks Andrews if he thinks the ship will go down..Andrews says something like "In ninety five minutes...The rest is history..
The lesson from the Titanic was it is sometimes the little things that cause the biggest problems...The Ocean was not the problem..the sea was described by survivor as being like glass reflecting the stars perfectly. The collision with the iceberg was only a minor scrape...Ships like the Titanic have sustained injuries to the hull from from collisions from submarines and did not go down..The hull breach apparently was along the stress line of rivets which were not reliable and they could have failed like Brady's pants..A situation that could of occurred without the iceberg...
The huge mistake in Amarin's case is their (and Covington's)..the "faulty rivets"... is deciding to try the case in the ninth district..Their legal representation should have fully apprised them that the biggest risk was the Judge. And at that point they should have immediately ruled out the ninth district..The last thing in the world the company needed was to concentrate on patent law which has the highest BS quota of of any subject in law. That is why patent law has its own bar...What should have happened is they should have been arguing property rights..and not some crazy patent law which is based on "plow design".
Amarin is the craziest stock I have ever seen..It's made some of the greatest, balliest moves of any stock ever then followed them up with mistakes that would embarrass a moron..And in my opinion, the fact Covington signed off on this, is a black mark on their record..A real bone head play...
What can they do now??? Well they could win the Appeal..but that is not a sure thing by any stretch..Amarin needs to Game Theory Optimize the different strategies..The undeniable fact is the market here is stupendous (think Coke can live with Pepsi)..This is going to be interesting if the appeal fails..Right now drug rules are set by state laws as far as scripts are concerned and the decision in virtually every case is the criteria of cheapest price. Not just generic..And the first thing Amarin needs to do is to notify every one of the drug plans that they intend to sell the drug to the plans at a lower price than the generics and they want the lower tier even if they are the brand..I know that flies in the face of all conventional thinking it is in line with the Vascepa is a volume play and not price play..
Can this actually be done?..I don't know. but I like it as a "dog in the manger" strategy..If we can not win then neither can you..I know generics can defray V costs by using their other drugs...But that really does not add much to their bottom line and EPA is a tricky drug to deal with in terms of production purification and stabilization..It stands to reason Amarin can produce the drug cheaper because it has agreements in place..
Amarin also will hold the rights to other areas free from Du's terrible ruling..Most importantly Amarin will have Europe..I remind everyone the population of Europe is over 700 million and the USA is only about 320 million..If Vascepa could treat one tenth of the European population 70 million patients.. AMRN PPS would be north (way north) of $1,000/share. The generics do not have any in roads into the European market for the next ten years..
We need to look away from the USA and cast our focus on Europe..That is where our current future lies...
":>) JL
