Lawsuit against Harvard raises questions about split of biotech royalties

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http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/03/17/lawsuit-against-harvard-raises-questions-about-split-biotech-royalties/29KG4BNGWd0eFmMohNk1EN/story.html



Lawsuit against Harvard raises questions about split of biotech royalties
By Robert Weisman Globe Staff March 18, 2016

Suggesting that Harvard University ran a “raggedy-ass” appeals process when a former graduate student claimed his research contribution was undervalued, a US judge has cleared the way for a rare trial on the school’s handling of royalties that could total millions of dollars.

The trial, which has yet to be scheduled, may open a window on a process largely invisible to the public: how researchers in Harvard’s renowned laboratories divvy up money from scientific discoveries that fuel the Boston area’s burgeoning biopharma industry.

“It’s very unusual that the case has gone this far,” said Steve Bauer, cochair of the national litigation practice at law firm Proskauer Rose LLP. “Usually colleagues (at research labs) sit down in a room and reach agreement. This is a blockbuster case where there’s potentially so much money involved that people are willing to fight over small percentages.”

The case focuses on Harvard professor Andrew G. Myers’s chemistry lab, which discovered a method for synthetically creating a new class of tetracycline antibiotics and licensed its technology to Watertown’s Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals Inc. Tetraphase raised $75 million in a 2013 initial public offering on the strength of that drug-making technology.