Robert Sanders<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t March 26, 2026\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
In a decision announced today (March 26), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office\u2019s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (USPTO and PTAB, respectively) reaffirmed its original decision that the Broad Institute, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University \u2014 referred to collectively as the Broad \u2014 first invented the use of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing in eukaryotic cells, the general term for plant, fungal and animal cells, including human cells.<\/p>\n
CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing is a revolutionary technique for manipulating DNA invented by Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley; Emmanuelle Charpentier, then of Ume\u00e5 University in Sweden; and their colleagues, one of whom worked as a Ph.D. student at the University of Vienna in Austria (collectively referred to as CVC, for California-Vienna-Charpentier). Doudna and Charpentier are widely recognized within the scientific community as the inventors of CRIRPR-Cas9 gene editing, and the two were recognized for the breakthrough with the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.<\/p>\n
In 2022, however, the PTAB decided that the Broad, not the Doudna\/Charpentier team, invented the application of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to eukaryotic cells. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit remanded the case to the PTAB to reconsider its 2022 decision, stating that the PTAB applied the wrong standard and failed to consider relevant evidence. Today\u2019s decision was reached after the parties briefed the case and the PTAB reviewed the evidence in light of the Federal Circuit\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n
The PTAB concluded that, \u201cAfter considering the Federal Circuit\u2019s remand and CVC\u2019s and Broad\u2019s briefing on priority, we determine that the preponderance of the evidence shows that the CVC inventors did not conceive of an embodiment of Count 1 before the Broad inventors\u2019 actual reduction to practice on 5 October 2012. Accordingly, we deny CVC\u2019s motion for priority.\u201d<\/p>\n
The University of California is disappointed by the PTAB\u2019s decision, which prevents 14 CVC patent applications from moving to allowance at the USPTO.<\/p>\n
Unaffected by this decision are more than 60 U.S. and more than 40 non-U.S. patents awarded to CVC claiming compositions and methods for the use of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing in all cell types, including human cells.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a U.S. Court of Appeals asked the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to reconsider its 2022 decision…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,107616],"class_list":["post-238940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-crispr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}