Biotechs Crushed Now, Crushed Later By Legal Ruling.

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 31, 5:08AM EDT

It is hard to imagine a greater blow to the biotech industry. Federal District Judge Robert W. Sweet ruled that sections of patents held by Myriad Genetics which cover two breast cancer genes were invalid. The New York Times reported that “the invalidation of genetic patents could hit diagnostics companies, agricultural biotechnology companies and perhaps even traditional drug makers, though drugs are often protected by patents on their own chemical composition.”

The biopharma segment of the biotech industry is already troubled by a harsh environment for raising funds. Hundreds of biotech firms are balancing cash consumption against their ability to show that their FDA trials for new treatments are making progress. Sometimes that race is lost and the companies go under.

Even the bipharma firms that can raise money often dilute their shareholders so significantly that share prices are pushed down indefinitely.

The court’s opinion on the matter will raise the issue in many biopharma investor’s minds as to whether the patents their companies hold may be invalidated, destroying almost all the market value of some stocks.

A series of rulings like the Myriad Genetics one could jeopardize the ability to fund the entire industry to raise funds.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.