A federal appeals court on Monday struck another blow against the University of California’s hopes of invalidating key CRISPR patents held by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, ruling unanimously that a U.S. patent board correctly concluded that the Broad’s patents did not “interfere” with those that UC had applied for.
Barring an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is highly unlikely to accept the case, or a request for the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to consider the case, the long and bitter legal saga is largely over, at least in the U.S. (The fight over CRISPR patents in Europe continues.)
The Court of Appeals decision held that there was “no interference in fact” between CRISPR patents awarded to the Broad and CRISPR patents that UC had applied for. That is what three judges on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, part of the U.S. patent office, had ruled unanimously in 2017.
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