Broad Institute

The U.S. Patent Office ruled Monday that patents for some CRISPR technologies do not belong to the university and other partner institutions.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office issued the UC system's 20th CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology patent with the arrival of the new year, according to a press release by Berkeley News.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced an interference between multiple UC and multiple Broad Institute patents, a signal that the USPTO will resolve the seven-year ownership debate regarding CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing in eukaryotic cells.

On April 23, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued UC Berkeley its fourth patent for CRISPR Cas-9, a revolutionary gene-editing technology.

After four years of litigation battles, the US Patent and Trademark Office, or USPTO, has finally approved a third CRISPR patent for the University of California.

The UC Board of Regents will convene at UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference Center from Tuesday through Thursday to discuss advocacy in state government, recent audits, court cases and policies about relations with Native American communities.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ultimately ruled that patents held for inventions by the Broad Institute, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are distinct from the UC’s patents. The institutions have engaged in a long battle over the patents, which have the potential to secure both prestige and billions of dollars in licensing agreements.

The patent is based on the enzyme system CRISPR-Cas9, which was discovered in 2012 by Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier.

CRISPR-Cas9, the gene-editing technology co-invented by a UC Berkeley professor, is again in the courts, as the University of California fights the Broad Institute, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, over patent rights that could yield billions.

The Broad Institute filed a brief Wednesday denying many of the University of California’s patent claims on CRISPR-Cas9, a groundbreaking gene editing technology.