MISUNDERSTANDING THE MEANING AND NATURE OF MNTA'S COMPLAINT
At the risk of incurring the wrath of Dew and the overwhelming majority of this board's highly-esteemed community, I'd like to suggest that you folks have completely misread MNTA's complaint against TEVA and MNTA's real motivation for the lawsuit.
First of all, this is one of the most frivolous and baselsss lawsuits that I've ever seen filed in a biotech patent case. Just think about it for a second (with your brains, not with your wallets): MNTA is alleging a patent infringement, because it thinks a potential competitor may have infringed on its patents. On the surface this is ridiculous. MNTA offers not one credible piece of evidence that TEVA has done any such thing or has any intent to do any such thing. It's all complete conjecture on MNTA's part. My guess is that this gets thrown out of court, before the complaint makes any legal headway.
Furthermore, MNTA has no cause of action to bring this complaint. MNTA has not one shred of credible proof that TEVA has been "engaged in, and made meaningful preparations to engage in, infringing conduct..." which "have caused, and are causing, injury to the plaintiffs..." Where's the "injury?" Where is the "substantial and irreparable harm?" (It only exists in the heads of MNTA execs and some of their shareholders, which includes many on this board. BTW, I am a MNTA long.) Any competent judge will laugh this one out of court...and quickly. MNTA will get its legal clocked cleaned by TEVA's attorneys, who are experts at this kind of thing.
However, let us assume for the moment that MNTA and its lawyers know quite well that this complaint is a piece of legal horse manure. Why, then, bring this "baseless and meritless" complaint at all? I think to understand why, we need to do a closer reading of the sub-text of the complaint. What strikes me as really interesting about the language of the complaint is how often MNTA uses quotes from TEVA executives to bolster its arguments. And not just the quotes from Bill Marth (which have been extensively repeated and analyzed on this board), but also quotes from TEVA CEO, Shlomo Yanai, and TEVA Research and Development Officer, Benzion Weiner, as well as numerous quotes from TEVA's PR's. Now none of these quotes are really germane to MNTA's meritless claims, so what the hell is really going on here?
I would argue that the sub-text reveals that the complaint is not a legal maneuver (per se)--as a pure legal maneuver, it's really frivolous--but rather must be understood as a business maneuver. By this, I mean, that MNTA is attacking TEVA's business strategy of attempting to provide Mr Market with assurances that TEVA's generic Lovenox is near imminent approval, and, thereby, injuring MNTA's business and causing its stock to be undervalued and, therefore, harming MNTA shareholders. MNTA is just tired of being on the defensive against TEVA's assertions, so MNTA is trying a little offensive action of its own. (Whether it's the smartest action that it could take is highly debatable. I would argue that there are other and better ways to tackle TEVA's aggressive business strategy in this matter, but that is a wholly different point than the one I am making here.) In blunt layman's terms, MNTA is telling TEVA execs to shut the fuck up about any imminent approval of its generic Lovenox. The complaint is really MNTA's first serious business salvo against TEVA's execs. (See what the filing did to TEVA's market cap.)
So who is the real audience for this complaint? Certainly, not the courts. First, the audience is Mr. Market. That is fairly obvious. But I would argue that there is a second, so far, unmentioned, audience, and that audience is TEVA's shareholders. We know that Israeli businessmen are a rather aggressive sort (to say the least)--and I have personal experience in dealing with many of them--but this complaint calls them out for their aggressive tactics. If TEVA's generic Lovenox never gets approved--and I agree with Dew that it won't, although I disagree with him that the TEVA application is simply a rehashed version of Lupenox (which, if true, would wholly contradict the basis of MNTA's complaint against TEVA), then the quotes used in MNTA's complaint could well be used by TEVA's shareholders against TEVA for being bamboozled into thinking that TEVA's approval for generic Lovenox was a foregone conclusion.
If MNTA has chosen a successful business strategy here, then one way to measure it is to carefully monitor TEVA's ongoing statements in regards to its application for generic Lovenox.
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