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 The appeal filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal
Circuit was announced Thursday by the UC, the University of Vienna
and handful of startup companies that have licensed its patents.
Microbiologists Jennifer Doudna of the University of California,
Berkeley, and Emmanuelle Charpentier of the University of Vienna
were first to apply for patent in 2012 after discovering how the
primitive bacterial system called CRISPR-Cas9 could be used to edit
genomes in simple pieces of DNA called plasmids.
The system works like a pair of molecular scissors, cutting out and
replacing specific parts of a cell's DNA. Scientists hail CRISPR's
potential for treating genetic diseases, such as sickle-cell anemia.
A team at the Broad Institute led by bioengineer Feng Zhang applied
for a separate patent six months later, but paid for a fast-track
review process, which landed them the first CRISPR patent in 2014.
The Broad's patents were for showing that the CRISPR system could be
used to edit more advanced, eukaryotic cells, including animal and
human cells.
In its February decision, an appeals board of the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office in Alexandria, Virginia, determined that the
Broad's CRISPR patents "did not interfere" with those awarded to the
UC because they were sufficiently different, allowing them to stand.
In the appeal, the UC is seeking a reversal of the decision, which
ended before actually determining who invented the use of CRISPR in
eukaryotic cells. Major commercial applications of CRISPR are
expected to be in eukaryotic cells.
CRISPR Therapeutics Intellia Therapeutics and Caribou Biosciences
are all parties to the appeal.
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The Broad said in a statement it is confident the appeals court will
affirm the ruling and "recognize the contribution of the Broad, MIT
and Harvard in developing this transformative technology."
UC, meanwhile, has already won a patent in the United Kingdom and
the European Patent office is expected to award another by May 10.
Earlier this week, Harvard geneticist George Church said he expects
the disputes will end in cross-licensing.
"I'm not that interested in the details of who pays who what. We're
all going to do very well, including the patients. That was evident
from the very beginning," he said.
(Additional reporting by Natalie Grover in Bengaluru; editing by
Anil D'Silva, Sriraj Kalluvila and G Crosse)
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