I could see this going beyond $40. This is totally gravy and has not been figured into the valuation. This adds an incredibly diverse long term intellectual property value to INCY. If these are interpreted as Bruce Lehman the director of biotech at the PTO implied in Science this spring: (I paraphrase) that the partial sequence is kind of like having the patent on the picture tube of a TV, if anyone else wants to build a TV they have to license the tube, then INCY is set for a long long time. IMO this will force a lot of pharma and biotech companies to do a deal, not just with INCY, but with all of the major genomic companies.
Think of this from a Pharma CEO perspective. Part of the problem with EST patents is that a huge number have been filed, particularly by INCY, that cover a fairly large percentage of the human (and other) genomes. Now, if you are developing a drug or other product, you have no idea of who has the time precedence for patents, if anyone, as these submittals have been sequestered by the PTO while they twiddled their thumbs for over 6 years now. The whole EST patent issue has been in limbo ever since the NIH first filed and created a stir (later to withdraw the application due to politics) back in something like 1992. Well INCY and others have been filing like crazy since then. Suddenly, INCY is getting patents on ESTs (and others to follow). You must now take this issue seriously and determine who owns the intellectual property rights on the products you are developing - NOW! You don't want to risk spending $100s of millions developing the drug or diagnostic only to find you don't own the intellectual property rights, or infringed by your means of discovery. Thus, to cover your ass, you need to find out what INCY (and others own), and the best and quickest way to do this is to subscribe to their dbases, agree to a small royalty and move on. What will give me a big grin is the first non-subscriber who has their whole world pulled out from under them when INCY files a lawsuit for infringement and then puts the screws to them for an after the fact expensive license, if they don't just totally block them and let one of their subscribers (ie. the competition) have the rights as an example to pay now or get screwed later. The Pharma industry I don't think will sit by and let their development portfolios go essentially generic before they are even on the market, I think they will need to protect their investments by doing deals with the genomic companies to make sure they have intellectual property protection. This doesn't even take into account the numerous biotech companies that will not end up owning the rights to what they are developing. The genomics world as we know it just took a major shift in orbit and it is a much better orbit for the growth of the genomics companies.
CONGRATS INCY!!!
Rman |
