USPTO grants another CRISPR patent to Charpentier

The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a third CRISPR patent to inventor Emmanuelle Charpentier, one of the key figures in the CRISPR landscape.

Today, March 12, US patent number 10,227,611 was granted to Charpentier, together with The Regents of the University of California and the University of Vienna (collectively known as UC Berkeley).

Filed in November 2015, the ‘611 patent specifically includes uses of single guide RNA formats of the CRISPR/Cas9 technology ‘in a cell’. In a cell specifically includes any cell type, including animal, plant and human cells.

ERS Genomics, a Ireland-based biotech company, is an exclusive licensee of certain rights in the UC Berkeley patents. Charpentier is a co-founder of the company.

Eric Rhodes, CEO of ERS Genomics, said: “We are pleased that the seminal contribution of Charpentier and her colleagues to CRISPR/Cas9 technology continues to be recognized by patent offices in the US and around the world.”

UC Berkeley already has two granted patents relating to CRISPR/Cas9 in the US, with a fourth expected to be granted soon.

In May 2017, the European Patent Office granted Charpentier her first European patent (EP2800811). This was followed by a second patent in March 2018.

But, the CRISPR landscape remains unclear, with two of the major players, UC Berkeley and the pairing of The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, engaged in a long-running dispute over the ownership of the breakthrough technology.

In September last year, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit handed a win to The Broad, after finding that the research institute is entitled to some patents covering CRISPR technology.

UC Berkeley had requested an interference proceeding, claiming that the claims of 12 patents and one application owned by the Broad Institute interfered with its own application.

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