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The legal battle over the intellectual property surrounding CRISPR gene editing technology is not over. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled last September that patents held by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University were not in conflict with previously submitted patents from the University of California (UC), Berkeley. But the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has now posted documents declaring interference between them—meaning they may cover overlapping IP.
“Certainly, this new patent interference in the US adds to the complexity of the landscape,” Catherine Coombes, a patent director with HGF Limited in the UK who represents CRISPR patent holders in Europe, writes in an email to The Scientist.
The interference applies to 10 patent applications from the UC team and 13 patents and one application from the Broad. This time, the USPTO appears to focus on an issue that ...
