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The fight to determine who invented fundamental parts of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology appears to be headed into a long, arcane battle, the likes of which would never be seen again in the U.S. patent system.
The move toward a so-called interference proceeding was signaled before the holidays by a slight change in the status of a key CRISPR-Cas9 patent application on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s website. The note went practically unnoticed for a week because the PTO suffered a massive power outage that shut down its computer systems.
But on Dec. 29, Jacob Sherkow of the New York Law School, writing on the Stanford University Law School’s Law and Biosciences blog, noted the change.
The patent application submitted by University of California, Berkeley researcher Jennifer Doudna (pictured above) and colleagues—a key part of the patent dispute—is now classified under the status “Interference — Initial memorandum.”
What this means is the patent examiner in charge of the case, Michelle Joike, has finally recommended that the case get kicked upstairs, in a sense, to a...