A US Court Just Put Ownership of CRISPR Back in Play

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

On Monday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said scientists Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier will get another chance to show they ought to own the key patents on what many consider the defining biotechnology invention of the 21st century.

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.

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 dispute in which hundreds of millions of dollars-as well as scientific bragging rights-are at stake.

[...] 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.

In 2012, Doudna and Charpentier were first to publish a description of a CRISPR gene editor that could be programmed to precisely cut DNA in a test tube. There's no dispute about that.

However, the patent fight relates to the use of CRISPR to edit inside animal cells-like those of human beings. That's considered a distinct invention, and one both sides say they were first to come up with that very same year.

In patent law, this moment is known as conception-the instant a lightbulb appears over an inventor's head, revealing a definite and workable plan for how an invention is going to function.

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