Often companies take their tone from the President of the country, and in the US, President Trump as a citizen Trump has his law firm on overdrive with lawsuits anytime he feels he has not been put in the best possible light. When acting AG Blanche was in his confirmation hearing, the law firm which he worked for was paid $9 million before he came to work for President Trump in Washington. Mr. Blanche said it was the law firm, but every partner knows exactly how much money is coming to them, it would be a very rare partner or managing partner that would not know what his compensation is.

In an article by Magie Fick and Michael Erman of Reuters, in the past few years the rise of weight loss drugs has been the most significant aspect in the drug industry. Two companies led the way because of their work on diabetes, one of the side affects of the drug was it caused weight loss. For generations, weight loss has been a billion dollar industry and it has only gotten worse as the average weight of people in the developed world increased. For years there has been clubs such as Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, many people belong and use gyms which includes weights. The reality is if it was possible to lose weight be taking a pill, there would be a huge demand, which company would led.

Novo Nordisk which is headquarters in Denmark has been the world leader, but Eli Lilly which is headquartered in the US was second. The first applications was injections, but Lilly came up with a pill first. The market for weight loss drugs is expected to reach $100 billion by 2030.

Novo Nordisk sued Eli Lilly accusing the drug maker of false advertising in claiming its weight loss medicines outperform Novo’s drugs.

Novo alleges Lilly compared the highest approved doses of its medicines with lower doses of Novo’s Wegovy and Ozempic which omitting newer, higher dose versions that Novo says delivered weight loss.

In the world of pharmaceutical companies, they regularly sued each other for patent infringements. There are some generic companies that have a large legal departments as a course of doing business. False advertising suits are less common, because they are harder to prove and every drug company has a history of stretching the line of truth, for sometimes placebos work because the patient believes they are taking something that will make them better.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, for drug companies the important aspect is what patents do they have? how long do they have to run? how well do they work before the generic brand comes out? Try not to pay attention to the advertising but the patents.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.