[aspenmayer]

I wasn’t casting aspersions on NN, but jumping off from the allusion that was made by the user who I replied to.

I don’t know what kind of sequence of events could lead to this outcome at NN, but perhaps they were hoist by their own petard. I’m reminded of the “money on the ground” joke involving two economists, which is semi-famous in these parts.

To wit:

> Economist 1: Look, there’s $20 on the ground!

> Economist 2: No there isn’t. If there were, someone would have picked it up already.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/19/money-on-the-ground/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28029044

Perhaps the folks at NN are so busy picking up (billions of) dollars that they neglect the dimes on the ground that it would cost to comply with these seemingly trivial, even menial functional requirements of keeping their money printer running.

I’m honestly as befuddled by this brouhaha as anyone. This is a monumental failure of multiple entire business units to perform the core competencies of their jobs. That said, I could honestly believe that the number of people whose job it is (or perhaps was) to worry about the patent expiry at all, let alone be aware of the repeated communiques from the Canadian patent office, is quite low. I would further believe that the accountability dodging has only just begun behind closed doors, if the internal game of megacorporate musical chairs hasn’t already concluded well before this news broke and reached the shores of HN.

[Marsymars]

Even at large corps, it's fairly common to outsource IP work to law firms that specialize in IP - and if you're Danish, it might make sense to outsource to a Danish law firm that has its own worldwide IP contacts (rather than getting your own worldwide branch offices to handle local IP laws everywhere). One of said contacts might then pawn off the work onto a junior, who then has their assistant handle all communiques from CIPO. Said assistant could then entirely drop the ball.

I've zero idea about anything specific to Novo Nordisk, but have enough exposure to IP in Canada to envision the above happening in other cases.

[xmcqdpt2]

That may be true if IP is not your core business but it is basically the core business of pharmaceutical companies. I don't speak from experience but it would seem surprising to me that any major pharma would outsource IP protection in a major market to contractors they can't sue for billions if they mess up.

It seems much more likely to me that they did it on purpose, as they claim to have.

[philipallstar]

> Perhaps the folks at NN are so busy picking up (billions of) dollars that they neglect the dimes on the ground that it would cost to comply with these seemingly trivial, even menial functional requirements of keeping their money printer running.

This isn't what that joke means.