Certainly, the California court ruling that gave two generic makers the right to sell copycat versions of the Lovenex bloodthinner, Sanofi’s best-selling drug, will make the drugmaker more desperate. The generic companies, Teva and Amphastar, must still receive FDA approval, which some say may take awhile.

“Now that they’ve invalidated the patent, the big question is what happens at the FDA,” David Beadle, pharmaceuticals analyst at UBS in London told Reuters. “To be honest, we don’t think generics will get approval, because Lovenox is a quasi-biological product.”

Yeah, but Sanofi shares are down this morning, and that tells you something.

Sanofi was already hit by the embarassing, albeit brief, arrival of generic Plavix last year, thanks to the gaffe committed by its marketing partner, Bristol-Myers Squibb. Since then, there’s been mounting speculation that Sanofi would buy Bristol, especially since Bristol still hasn’t named a new ceo to succeed Peter Dolan, who was booted a few months ago. There were recent reports that both companies have now hired investment bankers, too.

So this court ruling, which of course, Sanofi will challenge, may give added impetus to make a bid. If things aren’t going well, one course of action for Sanofi’s new ceo may be to beat his chest and talk tough about firing thousands of unwanted employees and slashing other costs.

[tags]Amphastar, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Lovenex, Patents, Sanofi-Aventis, Teva[/tags]