On April 12, 2021 AMRN announced that its long-time president and CEO, John Thero, will retire on August 1, 2021. Thero will be replaced by Karim Mikhail, who joined AMRN in 2020 as head of commercial for Europe. Appointing the head of Commercial for Europe maybe sends a message about where AMRN sees the bulk of its future revenue. AMRN under Theros failed to this point, to successfully use its patents to block generic competition for Vascepa following its label expansion and highly successful Reduce-It trial.
Karim inherits the almost completed/lost initial ANDA (generic drug) patent litigation related to Vascepa's initial indication of severe hypertriglyceridemia related to the Marine trial, and the more recent (Nov 2020) patent infringement lawsuit that AMRN filed against Hikma and now the insurance provider, Health Net. In the initial lawsuit, which AMRN lost at the district court and appellate court (Federal Circuit) level, the Supreme Court will almost certainly deny AMRN's request for them to review the case (writ of certiorari filed on 2/17/21) because the Federal Circuit panel did not even feel the case was close enough for them to issue a written opinion, and then the en banc (all active judges) Federal Circuit denied AMRN's request for en banc review.
As far as the second case (filed last November), in this patent infringement case, AMRN alleges that Hikma and now Health Net, infringe patents from a patent family that AMRN licenses from Mochida, a patent family related to the Reduce-It trial, and another family related to the Marine trial. While the filing of this second patent infringement lawsuit was not a surprise to me or the subscribers to my prior AMRN patent litigation subscription service, this is a highly complex patent law situation. For investors interested in AMRN, I recommend that you check out my video presentation HERE, that explains the differences between the first patent litigation against generic companies, and the second AMRN patent litigation against the generic company Hikma. We have made this presentation (and all my prior presentations on AMRN's initial lawsuit against generic drug companies) available with a free 30-day trial subscription to BPIQ. Just go to our home page (http://bpiq.com) and follow the links to sign up. Plus, there is a more detailed post HERE regarding the upcoming hearing in the recently-filed AMRN litigation against Hikma and Health Net, as well as details about the litigation in an IQ card on the topic, and upcoming litigation dates on our AMRN company page.
