Canceling a pair of patents in Europe will affect a broad network of biotech companies that have bought and sold the rights to pursue gene-slicing research, according to a September 25 report published in MIT Technology Review.
The patents pertain to CRISPR technology. Involved are professor and Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna, PhD, and the patent holders, which include the University of California, Berkeley; Emmanuelle Charpentier, PhD; and the University of Vienna.
Collectively, the patent holders are referred to as CVC, but Doudna and Charpentier, through their work at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Vienna, respectively, are credited with inventing CRISPR. Since 2017, however, they have been in litigation with the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard over who invented gene editing.
The decision to seek revocation of the two patents (reportedly EP2800811, granted in 2017, and EP3401400, granted in 2019, according to MIT Technology Review) comes nearly five months after an oral argument on May 7, 2024, in the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Regents of the University of California v. Broad Institute Inc.
It was argued that the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board applied the wrong standard in the case when in 2022, it issued a judgment and decision in the Broad Institute's favor. MIT Technology Review suggested the latest action on the part of Doudna and Charpentier is the result of an August opinion from a European technical appeals board that the earliest patent filing lacked sufficient technical information.
"There are already hundreds of patents being filed for CRISPR gene editing technology and applications," TestBiotech, a nonprofit based in the United Kingdom, explained. "However, in the debate about who actually invented the gene scissors and who can benefit from the patents, the upcoming decision may trigger some waves globally."
Law360 highlighted that the two patents have already been revoked in the U.S. for technical reasons.
Read MIT Technology's full report here.
