Two Nobel Prize winners want to cancel their own CRISPR patents in Europe
In the decade-long fight to control CRISPR, the super-tool for modifying DNA, it’s been common for lawyers to try to overturn patents held by competitors by pointing out errors or inconsistencies.
But now, in a surprise twist, the team that earned the Nobel Prize for developing CRISPR is asking to cancel two of their own seminal patents, MIT Technology Review has learned. The decision could affect who gets to collect the lucrative licensing fees on using the technology.
The request to withdraw the pair of European patents, by lawyers for Nobelists Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, comes after a damaging August opinion from a European technical appeals board, which ruled that the duo’s earliest patent filing didn’t explain CRISPR well enough for other scientists to use it and doesn’t count as a proper invention.
The Nobel laureates’ lawyers say the decision is so wrong and unfair that they have no choice but to preemptively cancel their patents, a scorched-earth tactic whose aim is to prevent the unfavorable legal finding from being recorded as the reason.
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