IMO they have never considered relying on EST or partial sequence patents, until very recently there were none issued - but the dbases are mostly made of EST or partial sequences and have obvious value, bringing in more than $100M in revenue this year. Full length genes and the proteins they encode have been patentable for a long time and have a history of being upheld, so I think there has been the thought that these are reliable patents to hold, and very valuable in the long run, and they now have over 10,000 full length genes sequenced. I do expect there to continue to be a huge time lag between when sequence patents are filed and when the PTO gets around to issuing them.
Oh, and in regards to this recent Pharma attempt at a non-profit consortium, I think one of the key words in the opening paragraph of the WSJ article, that the pharmas are "scrambling" to do a deal is very telling. In other words they are late and trying to play catch up. I seriously doubt that they will be able to pull it off, but it certainly seems to validate the value they see in SNPs. I also found it interesting that even though an ex-Merck exec is leading the charge, Merck has dropped out of the deal. This is the same Merck that already tried unsuccessfully to be a spoiler to INCY by funding a huge effort at Wash U, in St. Louis to ramp up sequencing and dump it into the public domain. INCY in some ways has benefited as Merck has funded training for many employees hired at INCY's St. Louis Genome Systems facility. But, INCYs revenue streams do not rely on SNPs to any great extent, so I just don't see this as a threat to their current business model. If the Pharmas succeed, they might take a small piece of future business, but if this data is put in the public domain, INCY customers will use it through their INCY software in the same manner that they use public domain sequences too. What I think will keep this from happening is that no one will ever get all of these pharmas to agree to terms to cooperate. The ones who have a lead on SNPs aren't going to want to give what they have to the ones who haven't done a thing, and the HUGE egos running these companies won't ever be able to agree on terms. In the meantime INCY's machines are cranking away 7 days a week, 24 hours a day........
Rman |
