They likely had no choice but to use the patents as security because the rest of the company seems to be still tied up as collateral for the 2 Fife notes from last April.

It's obvious that in providing this backstop David Welch made sure that he was very well protected in multiple ways. I am not saying Cytodyn will go bankrupt or the price will crash anytime soon, but, from his perspective, the patents are probably there in case the worst happened. Marc and ohm have done a good job going into the details of all of this and losing the patents seems like a low probability and a relatively good risk/reward to get the bond taken care of, at least a good risk/reward when there probably were not many other options.