By Donald Zuhn --
Earlier
this year, we
released our annual list of top biotech/pharma stories (see "Top Stories of 2009: #4 to #1"). At
the top of our list, we placed the biotech/pharma industry's attempts to
recover from the Great Recession. Back in February of 2009, we noted
that
almost a third of the Biotechnology Industry Organization's membership
had less
than six months of cash on hand, 45% had less than one year of cash
remaining,
and only 10% of the 370 publicly-traded biotechnology companies reported
a
positive income. Last April, the National Venture Capital Association
(NVCA) and PricewaterhouseCoopers announced that venture capitalists had
invested $3.0 billion in 549 deals in the first quarter of 2009, a 47%
decrease
in terms of dollars invested and a 37% decrease in terms of the number
of deals
as compared with the fourth quarter of 2008 -- levels of venture funding
that
had not been seen since 1997.
As 2009
wore on, some of
the negative indicators appeared to be giving way to more positive
signs.
Last August, Nashville-based Cumberland Pharmaceuticals snapped a
two-year
industry dry spell when it conducted an initial public offering (IPO)
that
raised $85 million, and in October, Talecris Biotherapeutics and Omeros
Corp.
conducted their own IPOs, raising $950 million and $68.2 million,
respectively. Other biotech/pharma companies have filed for IPOs since
then (although a few recent biotech/pharma IPOs have produced somewhat
disappointing results). With respect to venture funding, VentureDeal's
latest quarterly VC funding report indicated that biotech funding
increased a
"whopping" 65% during the fourth quarter of 2009 (see "VentureDeal Report Shows 65% Increase in Fourth Quarter Biotech Venture Funding"), and while the NVCA's report for
the
same period was less promising, the NVCA noted that the life sciences
sector
received the highest level of funding when compared with the other
sixteen
sectors the organization tracks.
However,
while IPOs and
venture funding levels speak to the impact of the recession on the
biotech/pharma industry as a whole, these indicators provide little
information
regarding the impact of the recession on biotech/pharma patent practice
in
particular. In order to get a better handle on the impact of the
recession on biotech/pharma patent practice, we have begun to analyze
data
available at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website and other
sources. While this analysis progresses, we thought it might be a good
idea to solicit comments from Patent Docs
readers who have responded in the past to our call for an identification
of
"bad" patents (see "A Simple Question about Patent Quality")
and
ways to address the problems facing the USPTO after Tafas/GSK (see
"Post-GSK: Where Do We Go from Here?").
So, our
question to readers
is this: How has the recession impacted your patent practice? In
particular, has it changed the way you prosecute applications or
litigate
cases, and if so, how? We would appreciate any and all comments you may
have on the topic. You may feel free to provide such comments in
response
to this post, e-mail them to the Patent
Docs Gmail address ([email protected]), or e-mail them
directly to
me ([email protected]).
If
you would prefer that we withhold your name from any future posts on
this subject, just let us know. Over the next few weeks, we will
collect
your comments, perhaps post a few short surveys, and then report back
with the
results. We thank you in advance for the help.
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