UC Berkeley Receives CRISPR Patent in Europe
By Jef Akst,
The Scientist
| 03. 24. 2017
Image by Darby Browning from Pixabay
The European Patent Office will grant patent rights over the use of CRISPR in all cell types to a University of California team, contrasting with a recent decision in the U.S.
The European Patent Office (EPO) yesterday (March 23) announced its intention to award a broad-strokes patent for CRISPR gene-editing technology to the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier (formerly of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research). The claims include the use of CRISPR across prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells and organisms, hitting upon the point of contention in a recent patent interference decision in the United States. In that case, the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) denied UC Berkeley the rights over the use of the technology in eukaryotes—the money-making application for CRISPR—leaving that intellectual property with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
“We are excited that this patent will issue based on the foundational research we published with Emmanuelle Charpentier and the rest of our team,” Jennifer Doudna, the leader of the...
Related Articles
By Jared Whitlock, Endpoints News | 10.09.2025
When Nirnay Murthy learned about a treatment for his toddler son’s rare condition, relief quickly gave way to disappointment.
A one-time gene therapy called Zolgensma from the Swiss drugmaker Novartis can halt spinal muscular atrophy, a deadly condition that causes...
By Meagan Parrish, PharmaVoice | 10.10.2025
When CEO Ben Lamm steps into the spotlight, it’s usually to talk about his efforts bringing extinct animals back to life. Once a far-flung idea, Lamm and the company he heads, Colossal Biosciences, have proven they can pull it off...
By Rob Stein, NPR | 09.30.2025
Scientists have created human eggs containing genes from adult skin cells, a step that someday could help women who are infertile or gay couples have babies with their own genes but would also raise difficult ethical, social and legal issues...
By Daniel Hildebrand, The Humanist | 10.01.2025
When most people hear the word eugenics, they think of dusty history textbooks and black-and-white photographs: forced sterilizations in the early 20th century, pseudoscientific charts measuring skulls, the language of “fitness” used to justify violence and exclusion. It feels like...