Patent Office Rules CRISPR Patents, Potentially Worth Billions, Belong To Broad Institute (theverge.com)

According to a ruling by judges at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the disputed patents on the gene-editing tool CRISPR belong to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. "The ruling comes a little over two months after a high-profile court hearing, during which MIT and University of California, Berkeley heatedly argued about who should own CRISPR," The Verge reports. From their report: STAT News reported that the decision was one sentence long. The three judges decided that the Broad patents are different enough from the ones the University of California applied for that the Broad patents stand. The patent ruling suggests that the work done by Jennifer Doudna of the University of California and her colleagues on CRISPR wasn't so groundbreaking as to make any other advance obvious. But that legal opinion isn't how the science world views her work, STAT points out: "Doudna and her chief collaborator, Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in the life sciences in 2015, the $500,000 Gruber Genetics Prize in 2015, and the $450,000 Japan Prize in 2017," the outlet notes.

Comments

Oh good

[The-Ixian]

So the deep pockets win again.

Also... WTF? We stand on the shoulders of giants every day while we share and consume information, yet only one entity gets to own the technique derived from all these other people's efforts. And it's no surprise to me that it is an entity which absolutely doesn't need it.

Seriously, screw these schools who make you pay them to own your ideas... what better business is there?

It's the same thing with college sports... billions of $$ and all straight into the war chests of these institutions and the player gets to pay for the privilege...

Two different things

[Geoffrey.landis]

"The patent ruling suggests that the work done by Jennifer Doudna of the University of California and her colleagues on CRISPR wasn't so groundbreaking as to make any other advance obvious. But that legal opinion isn't how the science world views her work, STAT points out: "Doudna and her chief collaborator, Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in the life sciences in 2015, the $500,000 Gruber Genetics Prize in 2015, and the $450,000 Ja..."

These are two different things. The patent ruling was only about whether the work by Doudna, Charpentier et al. made the MIT/Harvard work "obvious". The Breakthrough and other prizes didn't care whether the MIT/Harvard work was obvious or not, it was an award for heir work being a breakthrough, whether it led to any applications or not.

Re:Two different things

[coldandcalculating]

Important points from the article:

"It all began in 2012, when UC Berkeley biochemist Jennifer Doudna and others, including Charpentier, published a seminal Science paper on CRISPR. In this paper, Doudna showed that the gene-editing technology can be used to cut DNA in a test tube at targeted sites. Later, Doudna filed a patent application for CRISPR."

"Then in 2013, in another Science paper, MIT bioengineer Feng Zhang and his team reported developing a CRISPR system that edited genomes in eukaryotic cells — the cells of animals and people. When Zhang filed his own patent application, he applied for the PTO to “fast track” its patent review process. The result was that although UC Berkeley filed first, the PTO actually awarded the patent to the Broad and MIT in April 2014. (The Broad and MIT were later awarded a bunch of other CRISPR patents.) So UC Berkeley asked for a so-called “interference proceeding” — an official reassessment to determine who was the first to invent the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9.

This is why many in the life science community feel that Doudna/Charpentier got short-changed. This all happened right before the switch to the current "first-to-file" rule in USPTO. Also, many in the life sciences are frustrated at claims that Zhang's application to eukaryotic cells wasn't obvious. Those aforementioned awards were given to D/C precisely because scientists recognized the (obvious) potential of CRISPR/Cas to revolutionize the treatment of human disease. While Zhang's group has done some groundbreaking later work in the CRISPR field, Doudna et al probably deserve the patent. But props to MIT/Zhang for having a better understanding of patent law. That counts for a lot these days.

Re:Two different things

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that Doudna presented at a conference, to a room that included Zhang, where she described the process of using CRISPR-Cas9 to do genome engineering... where she said the obvious next step was to do this in Eukaryotes... from whence Zhang then went home and did the experiment described by Doudna and claimed to have invented the technology independently.

There's a reason academics aren't pleased with Zhang's behavior.

Re:Two different things

[bongey]

Zhang doesn't seem to have been the most ethical,one of the co-inventors said it was based off Douda's work. At the same time testimony a pioneer in gene splicing George Church said moving from bacteria to human cell “anything but obvious”.http://www.nature.com/news/titanic-clash-over-crispr-patents-turns-ugly-1.20631

I would say generally it is rather suspect Zhang "invented" the method just merely 6 months after he seen her lecture. Zhang also filed a fast track patent, it seemed like he was trying to game the patent system.

Re:Is there a product these patents protect?

[Geoffrey.landis]

"Re:Is there a product these patents protect?"
Yes.
In (overly broad) summary, Jennifer Doudna and collaborators showed that CRISPR could cut DNA at targeted sites. Zhang and collaborators used that targeting capability to edit DNA. Editing DNA is the product you asked about (in patent terminology, a method of doing something is patentable). That product use uses the cutting that Dudna demonstrated.

A quick (and still overly broad) analysis is that Dudna et al discovered the science, and Zhang et al reduced it to practice. However, reducing it to practice only gets you a patent if it's not obvious.

Well, IMHO...

[Anonymous Coward]

Both institutions may have received federal monies to support the research leading to CRISPR.
If they did, then the 'ownership' should be public - as in: they receive nothing more than intellectual kudos,
No Patents, no copyrights, no kickbacks.
Enough of the institutional power plays.
What about the scientists that did it? What do they get, besides a paycheck.....
Just so much is not right in this...

Changed under Bush

[transami]

The U.S. Patent system has become a travesty. Rulings like this make me sick to my stomach. "Fast track" should never have passed legal muster.

Moreover, it bothers me that the government can take someone's physical property to build a road or even a mall, but they don't apply eminent domain to life saving intellectual property.

Re:Is there a product these patents protect?

[interkin3tic]

There are about a dozen companies using licenses from one or the other to develop products. Including Editas which was oddly founded by Doudna of UC Berkley AND Zhang of the Broad institute

Not sure there's any CRISPR products for sale yet because research doesn't move as fast as the legal system does, but it's definitely not patent trolling. Almost every molecular biology lab is starting to use crispr in some capacity, So there should be applications coming out eventually.

There are supposedly some edited dogs in china I guess?