CRISPR/Cas9 ruling expected 

Abstract

A widely anticipated U.S. court ruling will soon bring to a close another chapter in the fight between the University of California, Berkeley, and Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard over legal rights to the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing tool. The troubles began when the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) approved CRISPR/Cas9 patent applications expedited by Broad, even though UC Berkeley submitted its own patent application first. UC Berkeley then petitioned USPTO to hold a proceeding to determine the tool’s original inventor, and USPTO started by deciding if UC Berkeley and Broad claimed to invent the same thing. While Broad’s application specified how to use CRISPR/Cas9 in eukaryotes, like plants and animals, UC Berkeley’s application described using CRISPR/Cas9 only in a test tube and on bacteria. Its broader use in all organisms, including in eukaryotes, was implied, Berkeley’s lawyers argued. But the patent court disagreed and in February 2017 deemed Broad’s