Bonum Certa Men Certa

CSIRO/CRISPR Monopolies on Life (Through Patent Law) May Soon be Dead

Does changing an organism genetically (by selective breeding or gene editing) give one ownership of anything new of its kind?

Pug



Summary: In an age of patented pigs (EPO) and plants/seeds it's important to keep an eye on the CRISPR patent dispute

OUR previous post covered the Supreme Court's (SCOTUS) upcoming decision on Life Technologies Corp. v Promega Corp. -- a case that can certainly impact patent scope at the USPTO, much like Mayo did.



In related news, CRISPR will be challenged quite soon and the patent microcosm isn't too happy about it. "Open Source Advocates Want CRISPR Technology to Be Free," one patent maximalist wrote (paraphrasing the headline). Well, "Open Source Advocates" are not alone in this and the key question here is patent scope, not cost. As Benjamin Henrion put it, "does it take the form of a computer program?"

Well, patents on life are certainly a step too far. We need to ask ourselves who benefits here. See the new article titled "This Is How the CRISPR Trial Will Determine Our Future" (from Vice):

Arguments in a trial to determine ownership of CRISPR, a gene editing technology, started Tuesday in Virginia. The outcome will determine who gets ownership of an incredibly lucrative and incredibly powerful tool that has the potential to “treat” genetic disease.

Two groups are contending for the editing technology patent: on one side is MIT’s Broad Institute and Harvard University, and on the other is the University of California, Berkeley.

The first patent for this technology was filed in 2012 by University of California, Berkeley, researchers for their work describing how genes could be edited in-vitro, The Scientist reported. Later in 2012, researchers at Harvard and MIT filed a patent for editing genes in eukaryotic cells—like those in a forming baby. The UC Berkeley researchers claimed the second patent violated their patent, and this week’s trial will determine who gets intellectual rights to the technology.


The following article was sent to us by some readers over the weekend:

They lined up early Monday morning for ringside seats at the most sensational scientific showdown in the modern era.

The moment the doors opened, lawyers, reporters and hedge fund investors raced for a spot in the cramped, windowless U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Va.

The tension in the room was electric, as the historic fight for the patent rights to the CRISPR gene editing technology got underway.

CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is a revolutionary gene editing tool that allows scientists to edit DNA with unparalleled ease and precision. Two prominent public institutions — MIT and Harvard's Broad Institute and University of California Berkeley — are locked in a legal cage match, fighting to privatize CRISPR.

It could be months before a victor emerges, but the winner will walk away with billions of dollars in licensing fees and total control over one of the world's most important scientific discoveries.



The Atlantic too has explained the importance of this case:

Nobody could recall such a long line at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. On Tuesday, more than an hour before the scheduled hearing for a bitterly contested patent dispute over the gene-editing tool CRISPR, a line of lawyers, journalists, and biotech industry execs had snaked through the lobby and across the giant Christmas tree that bedecks government-agency headquarters at this time of the year.

Of course, the dispute over CRISPR is no ordinary patent battle. CRISPR is a potentially revolutionary technique that is so broadly useful across medicine, agriculture, and industry that it could earn the dispute’s winner billions of dollars. Lawyers for the University of California, Berkeley, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard both argue that their scientists had invented CRISPR first.

The hearing was part of something called an interference proceeding—a piece of patent law that is quite literally archaic now. On March 16, 2013, the U.S. patent system switched the way patents are awarded: Previously, a patent was granted to the very first party to invent something; now, a patent simply goes to whoever files a patent application for an invention first. As it happened, Berkeley filed its initial patent just one day before the March 16 switchover. So here we are trying to figure out who invented CRISPR first.


"CSIRO [of CRISPR infamy received] a fair amount of undeserved bad press," IAM wrote (defending CSIRO, obviously!), "some even going so far as to label it a ‘troll’" because it is (see our wiki page about it).

Will this madness finally end, at long last?

More patents do not imply more innovation. The Appeals Court, according to this new article from Mike Masnick, also reminds us that "Patent Infringement Is Good For Competition".

"Of course," Masnick writes, "if you're playing along with the home game, you should already be scratching your head. After all, patents themselves are monopolies. So, if anything, you'd think that any antitrust argument would be focused on the patent holder rather than the patent infringer. But, here, RTI is arguing that the patent infringement itself is a form of an antitrust violation, as it's part of BD's effort to foreclose competition."

Faulty logic. For over a decade we have said the same thing about patents, even back when Microsoft used them to expand its monopoly and assert authority or reign over Novell (and by extension GNU/Linux). If only more people cared to study the real (original) purpose of patents and their impact on competition, a lot of those puff pieces about "innovation" would be long gone.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Wall Street Does Not Care About Microsoft's Impending (August) Layoffs, It Believes Lies From Microsoft, Whose Debt Grows Rapidly
If Microsoft is doing so well and swimming in money, why so many cuts (about 29,000 layoffs so far this year)?
Riot for peace & Love: Catholic Influencers and Digital Missionaries welcome Jubilee of Youth
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
 
An Illusion and Cult Worship of Magnitude (Ubiquity as "Victory")
GNU has been around for over 40 years and it'll likely continue to exist for another 40 (in some form)
Google: From Pointing to Relevant Sites to Pointing to Social Control Media to Actually Parroting Social Control Media as "Facts"
Google has become a misinformation company
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 30, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 30, 2025
How to Report Apple Layoffs Without Saying the "L" Word
don't look for the "L" word
Wayland Considered Harmful (to GNU/Linux Adoption)
it's not limited to games
My Experience With Judges Has been Positive, But We Must Still Pursue SLAPP Reform in the United Kingdom
We believe it'll be a "feather in the cap" if we can help change laws in the UK to better protect investigative reporters
Slopwatch Makes the Web Better
Remember what happened to BetaNews?
Slopwatch: Google News is Pumping in Lots of Web Traffic Into Fake Sites That Say "Linux"
somewhere between 30% and 40% of today's "news" about "Linux", as seen by Google News, is LLM slop
Links 30/07/2025: Climate Calamities Highlighted, Kyrgyzstan Crackdown on Expression/Freedoms
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/07/2025: Watson’s List of Limits, Lysenko 2000
Links for the day
Some People See What Others See... But Only 40 Years Later
When people deviate from "the norm" they typically get ridiculed and dismissed as "crazy"
Links 30/07/2025: Tea Class Action and Google Killing the Web With Slop
Links for the day
Last Month Our IRC Community Turned 17
Funnily enough we never missed a single day when it comes to logging
"The Unix Kernel"
Linux was inspired by MINIX
The Register Relays Microsoft Marketing, Dubs That Marketing "Research"
Hours ago they did a "Microsoft sez" piece
Dealing With Sociopaths, Liars, and Cranks
A dysfunctional society such as this would never develop
Not Owning Mobile Phones
It's not about resistance; it's common sense
Google 'Search' is Fast Becoming No Better Than Social Control Media Infested With Bots
Google emerged almost 30 years ago as a company looking to organise the Web and direct people towards informative pages. That Google is dead.
PCLinuxOS Had Functional Backups Before the House Fire, the Site Will be Restored in New Webhost
This is the direction we want for GNU/Linux, not some IBM sales strategy
Gemini Links 30/07/2025: Two Sides of Me and "Hooked on Cosmic Voyage"
Links for the day
Microsoft Will Continue Resorting to Crimes in Order to Keep GNU/Linux Usage Down
It is a real problem and we'll revisit it later this week
GAFAM 'Revolving Doors' at The Register and a "Bribe Price List"
"an analyst at Microsoft"
Microsoft Rapidly Shrinking (No, It's Not About Efficiency, It's About Unbearable Debt)
We'll soon see how much debt grew in the past quarter
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 29, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Corruption is the Standard Operating Procedure at the European Patent Office (EPO)
The EPO is a dictatorship that stains Europe
Local Staff Committee Munich (LSCMN) at the European Patent Office (EPO) Requests an Urgent Meeting to Avoid Abolishing the Office
This is dictatorship led by the most corrupt
Slopwatch: Fake 'Linux' 'Articles' and Spamfarms/Slopfarms
at least 5 fake articles in one day
Gemini Links 29/07/2025: Wayland Unfit for Use and LLM Slop Faking One's Language Skills With Robot Communications
Links for the day
Before the OSI Was Bribed and Hijacked by Microsoft via GitHub and Compromised Management...
The OSI isn't even remotely "woke"
Nailing the "Hey Hi" (AI) Hype Bubble
So-called "hey hi" as they define it now is all about large companies or regimes remotely controlling the processes running on your machine and even your very own behaviour on your machine, which is in effect no longer your machine but some remotely controlled apparatus
The OSI Has Been Silent for Over 3 Weeks, It Has a Severe Trust Issue After Promoting Microsoft and Proprietary GitHub
OSI took a lot of money from Microsoft to become a Microsoft lobbyist
"Four decades; Four freedoms; For all users" Now as a T-shirt
That's shown along the sidebar
Bribery is OK If You Work for Microsoft (No Punishment Expected)
It's very troubling and a symptom of a broken society/system when particular laws or rules are applied and enforced against some people but not against others
Links 29/07/2025: Bad Climate and "Fair Software Licensing" Blasts Microsoft
Links for the day
Links 29/07/2025: Data Brokers Gone Wrong/Rogue and "Copyright Thicket"
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Linuxconfig.org, Linuxsecurity.com, Fagioli, The Register
Today's "Slopwatch" isn't the first article about LLM slop
Someone Should Remind Microsoft Lunduke That Microsoft Hires Many Sexual Criminals and Pedophiles as Well
Microsoft Lunduke on an "expedition" to find one or more perverts, then generalise to everyone in the "community"
Cash Machines (ATMs) Make Mistakes and They're Proprietary Software
Correcting mistakes is a colossal challenge
We Cover Topics Other Sites Are Too Afraid to Cover (Even When They Know the Facts)
It's not that they doubt the truth, they just realise there may be consequences for talking about it
They Try to Tell Us the Free Software Foundation Inc is Dying, But Its Revenue Doubled Since the Dot-Com Bubble Burst
Being in "Activism" is never easy; but it does positive things for society
Yes, Microsoft is the Problem
"I am no MS shill."
It's About the Cost of Workers, Not the Fictional Skills Shortage (That Does Not Exist, the Media Spreads False and Sometimes Self-Fulfilling Narratives)
This issue isn't limited to computing, some dub it "globalism"
Another Failed Use Case for Chatbots (LLM): Legal Advice and Analysis
They're just some self-discrediting toy that costs way too much to operate
Links 29/07/2025: More Pushbacks Against Slop and More Praises of Tom Lehrer
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/07/2025: Purple Yarrow and Understanding Op Amps
Links for the day
This Monday WebProNews Absolutely Flooded the Web With Fake (LLM Slop) 'Articles' About "Linux", Google News Promoted Them as Legitimate
All of the following are fake articles attributed to pseudonyms or authors that don't exist; the images are also slop. Why does Google promote these?
Linuxiac is Not a Slopfarm, But at Least Some of Its Articles Are Machine-Generated Fakes
what we said about it was correct
Expect More Microsoft Layoffs
"Are more job cuts coming?"
Microsoft Behaving Like It's Running Out of Money to Pay Salaries
Does that seem like the behaviour expected from a company which claims it is "worth" trillions?
LWN Downtime Due to Linode, Not LLM Bots
"I’ve received an email letting me know that there is a potential for data loss."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 28, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 28, 2025