A US court just put ownership of CRISPR back in play

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 US patent rights were granted in 2014 to 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 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. “This goes to who was the first to invent, who has priority, and who is entitled to the broadest patents,” says Jacob Sherkow, a law professor at the University of Illinois. ... Read full article.