Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley have been at odds over gene-editing patent technology. The patent dispute concerns who owns the rights to Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (“CRISPR”) technology, which allows scientists to specifically target genes and cut parts of the gene out or even the entire gene itself.   The CRISPR gene technology revolves around an enzyme found in bacteria that naturally occurs as a response to virus threats. Specifically, the CRISPR-Cas9 protein is the one at issue in this dispute, though other CRISPR proteins appear to be coming to market soon.

Read more about CRISPR gene editing patent challenges.

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Darin M. Klemchuk is founder of Klemchuk LLP, a litigation, intellectual property, and transactional law firm located in Dallas, Texas. He also co-founded Project K, a charitable movement devoted to changing the world one random act of kindness at a time, and publishes Thriving Attorney, a blog dedicated to exploring the business of the practice of law, productivity and performance for attorneys, and other topics such as law firm leadership and management, law firm culture, and business development for attorneys.

Click to learn more about Darin M. Klemchuk's law practice as an intellectual property lawyer.