CRISPR patent fight: The legal bills are soaring

The meter is running like mad on the dispute over key patents on CRISPR genome editing. In its latest 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Editas Medicine — which has licensed one of the patents in question — disclosed that it has spent $10.9 million so far this year on legal fees incurred by the Broad Institute and Harvard, mostly to defend patents awarded for CRISPR inventions by the Broad’s Feng Zhang.

That cost is on top of $4.7 million spent in 2015. And the dispute has, in all likelihood, years to run.

The price tag raised eyebrows.

Law professor Jacob Sherkow of New York Law School, an expert in intellectual property law who has been following the CRISPR fight closely, called the legal bill “a lot even by patent litigation standards.” He had expected the dispute, “from soup to nuts,” to come in at less than $10 million a side. (The University of California, Berkeley has challenged CRISPR patents issued to the Broad and Harvard University.)

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