I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand I can agree that we could just let Gradalis carry on and come back to them when they are nearer to commercializing there treatments or even after that. On the other hand there is no value in having seminal patents if no one else recognises them and if we have to keep going to court to assert our authority then we will become litigators and not scientists. Do we have the income to support that approach?
If Gradalis don't play ball and we do end up in court with them we could also end up there with TransKingsom shrna (Marina in Pll) and sshrna (SomaGenics about to start HCV clinical trial). Anyone else could invent some novel name for shrna and away we go again.
I am not sure what the answer is but without money we cannot win a legal fight right now so a strategic move may well be to forget Gradalis and all the other versions of shrna, concentrate on our own programs, make some money and then turn our attention to the impostors. Under this scenario where does BLT get the money it will need to survive until in can make profit from its own programs? With over 1B shares and options already in the market how much more dilution will investors be prepared to cover?
This situation is not clear cut and some serious thought needs to go into BLT's next step in response to this Gradalis development.
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