From the San Francisco Chronicle: With potentially huge sums at stake, a federal court on Monday reinstated UC Berkeley’s legal claim seeking nationwide rights to develop and market gene editing, the transfer of genetic technology between living organisms with the capability of curing diseases. The U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board ruled in 2022 that the patent for so-called CRISPR technology belonged to the Broad Institute, affiliated with Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which had published a study in 2012 describing how the technology could be used to alter genes in plants and animals.
The board rejected a competing claim from the University of California, whose scientists had reported on the use of CRISPR technology to alter DNA six months before the Broad study. The patent board said the UC Berkeley report was the first of its kind but did not apply directly to genes in plants and animals. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled Monday that UC had presented evidence that its findings could be developed and applied to genes in all living creatures.
...The court ordered the patent board to reconsider UC’s contention that its study was the original breakthrough.
“This could end up being a big windfall for the University of California,” said Jacob Sherkow, a professor of law and medicine at the University of Illinois who has followed the issue for more than a decade.
He said the Broad Institute was paid $400 million in one of its first contracts with companies seeking to license the CRISPR technology. That contract and others already signed are not at risk, Sherkow said, but if Broad loses the patent, “no one will sign a future license with them.” ...
Full story at https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/gene-editing-patent-berkeley-broad-20323843.php.
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