The patent war is expected to start again! University of California, Berkeley, etc. Obtain CRISPR/Cas9 patent in Europe

The flames of the CRISPR/Cas9 patent war are expected to burn to Europe.

In last month's push, we mentioned that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted ownership of the patent to the Zhang Feng team affiliated with Harvard University and the Broad Institute of MIT. The review opinion mentioned that "the judge believes that the CRISPR technology patent obtained by Board Institute in 2014 is a different patent from the patent application submitted by Berkeley, and the former is not affected by the latter patent application." Now, the European attribution of this patent is about to verify this.

Last week (March 23, 2017), the European Patent Office (European Patent Office, EPO) announced its intention to grant a CRISPR gene editing technology patent with a wide range of protection (patent number EP13793997B1) to the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Vienna in Austria and the Helmholtz Center for Infectious Diseases in Germany (hereinafter referred to as the international team). The claims of this patent include the use of CRISPR in prokaryotic cells, prokaryotes, eukaryotic cells and eukaryotes.

According to the EPO's review process, the international team's patent is still a little short of being granted (some late details remain to be resolved, such as determining the final patent text and paying for the patent). Catherine Coombes, senior patent attorney for HGF Limited, said, "In essence, the grant decision was made. The EPO made the grant decision to show that it was not affected by the PTAB decision in the United States... its claims are very broad."

The Board Institute will now have nine months to file an objection to the claims of the EPO patent. Coombes said she expects that to happen. Coombes said, "Of course, we expect that once authorized, there will be a lot of opposition. Undoubtedly, the main focus of these objections is why the University of California, Berkeley, should not have the right to have all the claims listed at the earliest application date."

Kevin Noonan, a biotech expert at McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff Partners, an intellectual property law firm based in Chicago, noted that unlike the U.S. patent review process, the international team will have multiple opportunities to amend its claims. He said the team "could end up having a much narrower claim". If that's the case, he added, Europe could end up with what the United States could hope to see: the University of California, Berkeley, owns the patent for CRISPR use in prokaryotes, while the Board Institute owns the patent for CRISPR use in eukaryotes. Otherwise, the international team will eventually be able to patent CRISPR in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells.

Noonan said the EPO's decision should have no impact on the USPTO's future decisions. He said, "American courts and patent law will not care about decisions made by European courts and European patent law." At this time, the Board Institute declined to comment. Representatives from the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Vienna and the Helmholtz Center for Infectious Disease Research have not provided any comment to date.

In February 2017, at the critical juncture of its patent war with the University of California, Berkeley, Board Research announced the EPO's intention to license its first CRISPR-Cpf1 patent (patent number: EP16150428B1).

News source:http://news.bioon.com/article/6700763.html

This news was re-edited and reorganized by the Huaxun team and added analytical comments.