NanoViricides Inc. (NNVC)

[BonelessCat]

Why such a convoluted Intellectual Property structure?

TherCour was incorporated by NNVC's president Anil Diwan to take over the technology from his original development company, Allexcel. Allexcel still holds the patents and TheraCour is the holding and development company for the technology that also licenses other entities. The patent is held by Allexcel and proprietary knowledge is held by TheraCour which then licenses the use to other entities.

So, the relationship is this:

TheraCour has licensed its technology for use against viruses to NNVC in perpetuity. Dr. Diwan, the owner of TheraCour is the chief inventor and lead researcher as well as President of NNVC. TheraCour holds ~28% of NNVC's common stock (soon to be 26%) and therefore has a substantial vested interest in the success of NNVC. Dr. Diwan also holds about 9% of NNVC, giving him about 37% of NNVC's shares and a major interest in the success of NNVC.

So, why set up such a convoluted, multi-tiered structure? Well, first of all, when NNVC first formed following the reverse merger with e-dot com (or whatever it was called) the inventors and, researchers and officers had no idea the thing would work. They did know that test material given to Harvard (Beth Israel Deaconess) showed in vitro efficacy against Cytomegalovirus, but that sucker is one big virus with and easily ruptured envelope. Knowing that funding was dependent on incorporation, something that can be vulnerable to creditors, the principles decided to set up 3 tiers of protection for the base technology.

Base technology? The case technology is the Therapeutic Courier (TheraCour), a hollow spheroid that self-assembles consistently to 19nm to 21nm, or as Diwan likes to say about 20nm. The structure is a polymeric nanomicelle, a polymer consisting of an inner lattice with an outer coating to which molecules can be made to bond. The implications for use of the polymeric nanomicelle go far beyond simply targeting and destroying viruses.

Consequently, had the in vivo tests failed, NNVC might have failed, and in its failure some might have been tempted to collect losses by suing for the ownership of the base technology. Well, NNVC hasn't failed yet in any of its tests, with the single exception of EbolaCide which ran into problems with the Ebola Virus sheddase.

Today it seems odd to have such a structure, whereas only 4 years ago it seemed like the prudent thing to do.