Re: patent issues, I agree with you that there are concerns, but those existed well before Clinton/Blair statement. This is apparently a murky legal area, of which I know little about. It is one of the issues that caused me to miss the initial runup in CRA, which is funny in itself- a little knowledge hurt me there.
I am speculating on investor psychology here- two factors are prior biotech meltdowns in 1990s that many remember and lack of intellectual comfort by many with technology. This injects an extra degree of FUD into sector contributing to recent decline. Who knows what will happen next, slow recovery or basing with a seed event to start next acceleration.
What is intriguing to me is how old this technology really is- there is a fantastic book about the history of molecular biology (The Eighth Day of Creation : Makers of the Revolution in Biology), which is out of print, but well-worth reading. It covers events until the late 1970's, which is when the technology that exists now began to be created. Cloning, sequencing, and PCR all happened in late 70s to 1990 time frame. In internet time, antediluvian....Now we get another spurt of investor interest. Are things different this time??? Yes, but I think time to market here is on a much different scale (it's not like writing software), but once you get there, money flow should be steady and large. |
