SCO­TUS just turned its back on Al­ler­gan’s le­gal ma­neu­ver to take a blow at in­ter partes re­view. What did you ex­pect?

It’s fi­nal­ly over.

From the very be­gin­ning, Al­ler­gan’s at­tempt to safe­guard its block­buster Resta­sis fran­chise by hand­ing over the patents to a Mo­hawk tribe in New York looked like a bad par­o­dy of a le­gal loop­hole ma­neu­ver. Now it’s a dead par­o­dy, af­ter the Supreme Court on Mon­day shunned the com­pa­ny’s at­tempt to take its ar­gu­ment to the high­est court in the land with a sin­gle line.

The tribe’s im­mu­ni­ty would safe­guard the patents from the in­ter partes re­view process, they rea­soned, and they could ba­si­cal­ly lease back con­trol of the drug while steer­ing clear of a se­ri­ous threat from gener­ic drug­mak­ers.

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