“Lipitor, which is designed to lower cholesterol, totaled $10.8 billion in 2004 sales, the first drug ever to surpass $10 billion. Deutsche Bank projects Lipitor sales will grow to $14.2 billion in 2007 if Pfizer successfully holds its patents, translating into annual earnings of $2.54 per share. But if Pfizer loses, it could face a $8.6 billion plunge in annual sales by 2007, most of it in U.S. revenue, resulting in annual earnings of $1.64 per share, according to Deutsche Bank. Bernstein’s projections for Pfizer are similar.”

Link:
http://www.forbes.com/sciencesandmedicine/2005/10/11/pfizer-lipitor-patent-cx_mh_1011pfizer.html

Now the drop of $8.6 Billion in sales is presumably almost entirely, if not entirely, a loss in profits to Pfizer because it can no longer charge a higher price for Lipitor in virtue of a patent.

But, of course, the $8.6 Billion is essentially equivalent to the projected $8.4 Billion in profits stipulated in the Meurer and Bessen article. While the Meurer Bessen figure is for 1999, and the $8.6B was projected for 2007, that should have little impact on the comparison.

But here’s the absurdity: the $8.6B represents the value to one company for one drug on one patent. The projected $8.4B supposedly represents the TOTAL profits of ALL patents for ALL companies in the United States according to the mathematical model of Meurer and Bessen.

I simply ask, how can this analysis be anything but a sham, given how it fails even the most obvious sanity check?

I repeat my earlier point: I can see no way that an economist could come up with figures like this, as absurd as they are on their face, unless they were driven entirely by ideology up front.

This “analysis” looks less and less like scholarship to me, and more and more like propaganda

je me pose les mêmes questions