Altair tangled in licensing dispute

Fifteen months ago, Altair Nanotechnologies of Reno thought a licensing deal with Spectrum Pharmaceuticals of Irvine, Calif., might be worth $100 million.

At the moment, it's worth little more than a headache.

Alan Gotcher, Altair's president and chief executive officer, told investors last week that his company is back in arbitration with Spectrum after a November deal fell through.

The arbitration agreement reached late last year called for Altair to receive 140,000 shares of Spectrum stock stock worth about $580,000 last week to settle a dispute over testing of an Altair product that targets kidney disease.

In January, Spectrum backed out, and arbitration started anew.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in late March, Spectrum said it invested less than $250,000 in researching Altair's product, Renazorb, and said its future interest in the product is uncertain.

The Spectrum deal cast a shadow, too, over the first-quarter earnings that Altair reported last week.

It reported that its revenues fell to $545,000 from the $1 million it recorded a year earlier.

The difference, Altair said, was a $695,000 payment it received from Spectrum in last year's first quarter.

Altair reported a loss of $4.56 million for the quarter compared with a loss of $2.2 million a year ago.

Gotcher said the company's loss widened because it's gearing up new product development.

He projected that earnings will trend upward the rest of this year.