Amarin Corp Plc (AMRN)

[Bouf]

N—sorry about the Trump Q, out of line there. SCOTUS had no reason to touch this case. It had no national legal implications, and the court does not take business cases that don’t raise important federal legal Qs. The obviousness issue for Amarin was mostly a factual question, not a legal one with the standard for obviousness not really in play. Another reason SCOTUS review was not very likely.

The big mistake was hubris of former mgmt taking this bet the company case to trial before this judge, with no plan B if they were to lose. The HW law is tilted in favor of generics, and the current conditions of high drug prices influence some judges to apply the law to make patent protection harder to retain. This was always a risk, despite the solid evidence that the AMRN indication was not obvious at the time. With 20-20 hindsight, the risks were too great to allow the decision to be made by the judge, who like most decent judges, was smart enough to write the decision so that it would be hard to overturn. Very bad business decision to not settle and eliminate the big risk. SCOTUS review was always a moonshot chance only.

B