Owning a fundamental patent—like the ones recently issued to Protein Design Labs Inc. in Europe and the US for humanizing antibodies—is like owning a beautiful car, president Jon Saxe says: “You could just let it sit in the garage, but if you want to drive it around, you've got to gas it up.”
To fuel PDL's aspirations, execs at the Mountain View, CA-based firm filed a follow-on offering in late January seeking $70...