{"id":848148,"date":"2025-05-14T04:11:55","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T09:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/14\/a-us-court-just-put-ownership-of-crispr-back-in-play\/"},"modified":"2025-05-14T04:11:55","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T09:11:55","slug":"a-us-court-just-put-ownership-of-crispr-back-in-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/14\/a-us-court-just-put-ownership-of-crispr-back-in-play\/","title":{"rendered":"A US court just put ownership of CRISPR back in play"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The pair shared a 2020 Nobel Prize <\/a>for developing the versatile gene-editing system, which is already being used to treat various genetic disorders, including sickle cell disease<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But when key US patent rights were granted in 2014<\/a> to researcher Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the decision set off a bitter dispute in which hundreds of millions of dollars\u2014as well as scientific bragging rights\u2014are at stake.<\/p>\n

The new decision is a boost for the Nobelists, who had previously faced a string of demoralizing reversals over the patent rights in both the US and Europe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis goes to who was the first to invent, who has priority, and who is entitled to the broadest patents,\u201d says Jacob Sherkow, a law professor at the University of Illinois.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He says there is now at least a chance that Doudna and Charpentier \u201ccould walk away as the clear winner.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CRISPR patent battle is among the most byzantine ever, putting the technology alongside the steam engine, the telephone, the lightbulb, and the laser among the most hotly contested inventions in history.<\/p>\n

In 2012, Doudna and Charpentier were first to publish a description of a CRISPR gene editor <\/a>that could be programmed to precisely cut DNA in a test tube. There\u2019s no dispute about that.<\/p>\n

However, the patent fight relates to the use of CRISPR to edit inside animal cells\u2014like those of human beings. That\u2019s considered a distinct invention, and one both sides say they were first to come up with that very same year.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

In patent law, this moment is known as conception\u2014the instant a lightbulb appears over an inventor\u2019s head, revealing a definite and workable plan for how an invention is going to function.<\/p>\n

In 2022, a specialized body called the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, or PTAB, decided that Doudna and Charpentier hadn\u2019t fully conceived the invention because they initially encountered trouble getting their editor to work in fish and other species. Indeed, they had so much trouble that Zhang scooped them with a 2013 publication demonstrating he could use CRISPR to edit human cells<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

The Nobelists appealed the finding, and yesterday the appeals court vacated it, saying the patent board applied the wrong standard and needs to reconsider the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to the court, Doudna and Charpentier didn\u2019t have to \u201cknow their invention would work\u201d to get credit for conceiving it. What could matter more, the court said, is that it actually did work in the end.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a statement<\/a>, the University of California, Berkeley, applauded the call for a do-over.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s decision creates an opportunity for the PTAB to reevaluate the evidence under the correct legal standard and confirm what the rest of the world has recognized: that the Doudna and Charpentier team were the first to develop this groundbreaking technology for the world to share,\u201d Jeff Lamken, one of Berkeley\u2019s attorneys, said in the statement.<\/p>\n

The Broad Institute posted a statement<\/a> saying it is \u201cconfident\u201d the appeals board \u201cwill again confirm Broad\u2019s patents, because the underlying facts have not changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The decision is likely to reopen the investigation into what was written in 13-year-old lab notebooks<\/a> and whether Zhang based his research, in part, on what he learned from Doudna and Charpentier\u2019s publications.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The case will now return to the patent board for a further look, although Sherkow says the court finding can also be appealed directly to the US Supreme Court.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Antonio Regalado<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The pair shared a 2020 Nobel Prize for developing the versatile gene-editing system, which is already being used to treat various genetic disorders, including sickle cell disease.\u00a0 But when key US patent rights were granted in 2014 to researcher Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the decision set off a bitter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":848149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2047,26027,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-848148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-court","8":"category-ownership","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}