< Back to latest news & events

News

Latest CRISPR patent dispute

June 2019

HGF Patent Director and established CRISPR expert Catherine Coombes comments in The Scientist and Science Magazine within hours of recent CRISPR dispute.

The Scientist

USPTO restarts CRISPR Patent dispute between broad and UC

The US patent office declares an interference between the intellectual property held by the Broad Institute and several patent applications filed by the University of California – opposite its previous ruling. The legal battle over the intellectual property surrounding CRISPR gene editing technology is not over. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled last September that patents held by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University were not in conflict with previously submitted patents from the University of California (UC), Berkeley. But the US Patent and Trade mark Office (USPTO) has now posted documents declaring interference between them—meaning they may cover overlapping IP.

“Certainly, this new patent interference in the US adds to the complexity of the landscape,” Catherine Coombes, a patent director with HGF Limited in the UK who represents CRISPR patent holders in Europe, writes in an email to The Scientist.

Click here for the full article.

Science Magazine

Surprise patent ruling revives high-stakes dispute over the genome editor CRISPR

The high-profile patent fight over who invented a key feature of the genome editor CRISPR has been resurrected. The 3-year-old battle, which a U.S. appeals court appeared to have put to rest in September 2018, pits parties represented by the University of California (UC) against the Broad Institute of Cambridge, Massachusetts. It revolves around the use of CRISPR, originally derived from a DNA-cutting system used by bacteria, in the more complex cells of eukaryotes, which includes humans, making the contested patents key to the potentially lucrative development of novel medicines.

Catherine Coombes, a patent attorney at HGF in York, U.K., who does not represent Broad or UC but is involved in CRISPR patents, says the new interference “adds to the complexity of the landscape.” The European Patent Office has grated “overlapping rights” to both groups and others who have filed CRISPR patent applications, anticipating that legal fights will occur later. “For human therapeutics, it is still too early to know where the key patents will lie,” Coombes says, noting that different enzymes used in various CRISPR systems ultimately may make one invention safer or more effective than another.

Click here for the full article.

Latest updates

More Exam Success at HGF!

HGF is delighted to announce success for many of our colleagues in the recent exams and to congratulate them on this fantastic achievement. Martyn Fish CEO comments, “These exams are …

Read article

IP Ingredients Blog, Parts 1-9

Welcome to our new blog series, IP Ingredients, created by our Food & Drink Team. This blog will explore the latest IP news, updates, and discussions in the food & …

Read article

Protecting Progress: Intellectual Property Considerations for Sustainable Aerospace Innovations

The aerospace industry has long been associated with cutting-edge technology and innovation. With the ambitious target of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, the development of innovative technologies that reduce …

Read article

9th Annual Translational Microbiome Conference

Partner and Patent Attorney Craig Thomson will be speaking at the upcoming 9th Annual Translational Microbiome Conference in Boston, US on the 25th March 2024. This event will continue to …

Read article

Diagnosis and chill? The rise of AI health tech subscription services

By automating tedious and time-consuming tasks, and having the capability to identify trends and connections in vast amounts of patient data, AI has the potential for good, to speed up diagnosis, improve …

Read article

HGF Ranked Highly in UK WIPR Trade Mark Rankings 2024

We are happy to announce that the WIPR rankings for 2024 are now live, and HGF has been highly ranked. HGF has been recognised as: Highly Recommended in Non-Contentious Law …

Read article