>…it seems to me that the "loophole" was the recognition that an AG was not a generic restricted/governed by Hatch-Waxman but rather a license of the patent holder.<
That’s right. I consider this a loophole in H-W because it’s clear that Congress did not intend to provide for AG’s* when the H-W bill was drafted back in the 1980s.
*If Congress had intended to provide for AG’s, H-W would presumably have mentioned AG’s explicitly and it would not have contained such elaborate provisions for first-filer exclusivity.
“The efficient-market hypothesis may be the foremost piece of B.S. ever promulgated in any area of human knowledge!”