Case law

Patent protection of the CRISPR/Cas9 technology - a contribution from our partner Dr. Maxien in the latest issue of BIOspektrum

For years, two US universities have been struggling over who is entitled to patent protection for the CRISPR/Cas9 technology respectively who invented it (first): on one side are the University of California (UC) and the two Nobel Prize winners Emmanuel Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, and on the other side are the Board Institute and two scientists, George Church and Feng Zhang.

With her comment "CRISPR/Cas9-Genschere: Nobelpreis und Patentstreit – die zwei Schneiden der Schere?" (literally: CRISPR/Cas9 gene scissors: Nobel Prize and patent dispute - the two edges of the scissors?") in the current issue of the life sciences magazine BIOspektrum, our partner Dr. Christiane Maxien illustrates the different situation of the patent dispute in the US and in Europe. You can download the text of the article, which is in German, here.

BIO Spectrum is the publication medium of the (German) Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (Gesellschaft für Biochemie und Molekularbiologie, GBM), the Association for General and Applied Microbiology (Vereinigung für Allgemeine und Angewandte Mikrobiologie, VAAM), the Genetics Society (Gesellschaft für Genetik, GfG) and the German Society for Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Experimentelle und Klinische Pharmakologie und Toxikologie, DGPT). Every two months, the magazine gives around 15,000 readers an overview of new developments in the life sciences (with a focus on molecular biology, biochemistry, microbiology, genetics and developmental biology) and provides information on current affairs from business and politics. (according to scientific publishing house Springer)