Billion Dollar Loogie

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Sure, the walking, talking gob of phlegm (pictured) was genius. But it was a clever intellectual property strategy that made that loogie worth $2.3 billion. That’s how much British conglomerate Reckitt Benckiser just agreed to pay for Adams Respiratory Therapeutics, the maker of the cough medicine Mucinex (and sponsor of the Mr. Mucus ads). Guaifenesin, the active ingredient in Mucinex, is a medicine that’s about as old as the hills. But Adams was the first company to do clinical trials to prove to the FDA that the long-acting form of the drug is safe and effective. That meant it got exclusive rights to that formulation — which was enough to get the FDA to bump a bunch of generic versions off the market. And congested consumers, happy to take their medicine less often, snapped up Mucinex.