BY: Kennyn Statler and Michael Baker
CRISPR Decision Highlights the Importance of Strategic Claims Drafting
The battle over CRISPR (Clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats) patents highlights the importance of having a sound patent strategy before filing the first disclosure. The University of California v. Broad Institute, Inc. is an excellent example of the difference a well-executed strategy can make.
In 2013, teams from UC Berkeley and the Broad Institute filed applications seeking patents for the process of editing genetic information using the CRISPR-Cas9 protein. This came only months after both parties published scientific articles and filed provisional patents. Their strategies when filing their patent applications were distinct and the results decisive.
See the full white paper for more information on this case.