2020 CRISPR patent landscape – where do we stand?

Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna just received a few hours ago the Nobel prize in Chemistry 2020 for “the development of a method of genome editing”, namely their 2012 discovery of the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors which basically enables to “cut and paste” DNA. This scientific discovery has fueled an unprecedented biotechnology development in the past 8 years. When we started to analyze the genome editing patent landscape in Spring 2014, there were only 96 patent families(*) in our records in relation with CRISPR. We have now more than 7400 in our latest records – and adding an average of 200 more every month in 2020. What does this data tell us on who has taken advantage in engineering new life sciences solutions out of this amazing scientific discovery, now confirmed worth a Nobel Prize?

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Myths and realities on DuPont CRISPR assets

On the agriculture side, IAM just published this week some basic quantitative data analytics spotting DuPont as the leader in CRISPR patent assets. The IAM interview also highlighted some questions about the licensing position of DuPont in the CRISPR patent battle. This was quite surprising to read for us as this information has been publicly known since 2014 and regularly compiled in both our patent and licensing landscapes. Let’s take a closer scrutiny into the DuPont CRISPR assets. In our monitoring of licensing data since 2014, we have actually spotted DuPont Pioneer as one of the earliest player to position their licensing-in in a very strategic way:

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More CRISPR interfering inventors may come from Vilnius

Earlier this month, we were interviewed by The Scientist regarding the side inventorship dispute between Feng Zhang and Luciano Marraffini on some of the Broad patent applications. Public registers at the USPTO, WIPO and the EPO expose further details of the otherwise un-publicized legal battles for invention ownership between their employers (the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and Rockfeller University), back from the 2012-2013 early filings.

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