On 16 January 2020, the European Patent Office (EPO) Board of
Appeal revoked a patent related to CRISPR/Cas9 technology (See), and in doing so delivered one of the
most anticipated decisions (See) in the field of biotechnology patents in
recent times. This gene-editing technology, which is the subject of
a bitter battle for intellectual property rights between two rival
parties – The Broad Institute and the University of
California (UC), Berkeley, is revolutionizing research in
biotechnology.
The case concerned one of Broad Institute's CRISPR patents,
EP2771468, which was revoked owing to a jurisdictional difference
in the interpretation of valid claiming of priority rights. The
Broad Institute's licensing strategy is likely to be
compromised by this outcome, as UC Berkeley has already obtained a
patent in Europe.
