UC's CRISPR Licensees Unbowed By Losing Initial US Patent Office Ruling

Round one in the heated patent fight over rights to the genome-editing technology CRISPR/Cas9 has gone to Harvard University's and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Broad Institute and its intellectual property licensees, including Editas Medicine Inc. However, the University of California and its licensees says that it is far from beaten and remains confident of an eventual overall victory.

They were reacting to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) ruling Feb. 15 that said contested patents on the CRISPR/Cas9 technology do belong to the Broad Institute, dashing efforts by the University of California (UC) and its corporate allies to overturn those patents. The briefly worded legal