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From Scientists to Lawyers
Now that the pandemic is fading, Moderna has decided business as usual should again prevail. Thus they are suing Pfizer over Covid vaccine technology. To their credit, they always said they wouldn’t enforce their IP during the pandemic (and probably never would in poor countries - emphasis on probably)
If you gotta sue someone, may as well be the richest drug company in the world. Moderna seems mostly to be looking for a licensing fee for each dose Pfizer sells to non-governments going forward.
The root of the lawsuit is they feel Pfizer infringes on (1) their patent for modified mRNA that enables the molecule to stick around longer, and (2) for violating their patent on encoding a full spike protein in the MERS virus.
The first one would probably have some teeth, but the second seems ridiculous. A new virus emerged and they claim that a patent on an old virus applies to the new one? Good luck with that.
It wouldn’t be surprising if BioNTech has patents that are used in a countersuit and this all comes to naught. As always, the only certain winners are the lawyers.
Organicell
When your company sells 237 million shares you would generally be rolling in the dough. But not when you sell the shares for an average of 2.3 cents. Organicell netted a big $5.5M from its 237 million shares. For a company with 22 employees, not the greatest haul.
Cool Roast
If a company’s CEO has the idea to wear sunglasses in his Team pic, you know he is one cool dude. But if he also unbuttons his collar, fails to shave and refuses to acknowledge the camera, then he is officially the Coolest CEO Ever. Stay cool, bossman!
Onconuclear Bomb
If your goal is to defeat cancer, you could do little better than using the catch phrase “Treating cancer by exploding cancer cells.” But then again, one way to improve it might be not repeating a word in a 6-word phrase.
How about this: “Detonating cancer cells to improve lives”
Cool Logo. Weird Menu.
Hard to stand out with your website’s menu design, but you could always throw a period after every item and pretend it's edgy. Other than those excessive menu periods, that was a pretty chic website. Neat teal/pink color scheme on the logo, plus the homepage even holds an appearance of the infamous blue helix partway down the first page. (though they toned down the color which is borderline blasphemy). 8/10
$0.5 Billion
A biotech company trumping up their connections with a QVC dermatology brand is a unique occurrence. Also unique is the news release headline bragging about this company’s QVC sales numbers: $0.5 billion.
Who uses a decimal when $500 million sounds pretty good itself? Why not say it was $0.0005 TRILLION?
Minerva Neurosciences
The New York Mets owner Steve Cohen has taken an 8.8% stake in the publicly-traded neuroscience company Minerva Neurosciences. The value of said stake is roughly equal to 4.5 BBYs (Bobby Bonilla-years). After a brief period of excitement, Minerva stockholders can now look forward to a decade of underachievement and general hopelessness.
Ancient Website
Always good to run into a website that provides a blast from the biotech past. Medisynergics has this doozy still hanging about. Landing page has a picture of some wheat plus a piece of the sky from above the wheat that has been replicated and pasted over to the right. Got an ugly-ass 2002 menu too. Very nice!
Clicking through, you’ll see every page has its own background, the best being the page for their new lab space. It has a background of a repeating chemical structure image ala Geocities and look - two handicapped parking spots!
What may be the most amazing thing is this company is still in business.
Idea Repository
People say ideas are worthless – execution is everything. And people are mostly correct. That said, if you have an idea you want to get rid of, this company has a spot where you can submit ideas. No mention of what types of ideas they want, just ideas.
BioPharmGuy used to get together with a friend and think of ideas and write them down. Seriously, just sat there and thought of ideas. (alcohol may have been involved) Guess it may be time to dig up those old documents!
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