Eli Lilly Officially Sues Canada For 'Lost Profits' Because Canada Rejected Eli Lilly's Patents

from the incredible dept

A few years ago, we noted that Eli Lilly was facing some hard times, in large part because it had focused its entire business model around getting patents, and many of those patents were expiring, and very few new ones were in the pipeline. Even so, it was still rather surprising earlier this year to see Eli Lilly claim that Canada owed it $100 million for undermining the company's "expected future profits" by rejecting an Eli Lilly patent. The Canadian court reasonably felt that it shouldn't give Eli Lilly a patent on something that wasn't determined to be useful. Normally, if a country doesn't give you a patent, you move on. However, Eli Lilly used a questionable part of NAFTA, the so-called investor-state dispute resolution mechanism, to argue that Canada was "expropriating its property," and thus demanded compensation -- starting at $100 million, which it then raised to $500 million.