The Wall Street Journal mentioned Partner Katherine Rubino in “Venture Investment in Crispr Gene Editing Spurs Innovation, Hunt for IP,” which discusses the recent win by MIT’s Broad Institute over a drawn out dispute over the inventorship of CRISPR patents.
The Wall Street Journal Excerpt:
The dispute pitted Broad against the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Vienna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, who shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Berkeley professor Jennifer Doudna for their Crispr-Cas9 research.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office decision affects companies that use Cas9, favoring those with ties to the Broad, including Editas Medicine Inc., and going against drugmakers such as Intellia Therapeutics Inc. that have licenses from the University of California and its partners.
Intellia last week said it had filed patent applications for its own Crispr-Cas9 innovations and that it doesn’t expect the ruling to affect its ability to develop future Crispr-based medicines.
Several Crispr-based startups raising venture capital recently are using enzymes other than Cas9 to enable new applications for gene editing, avoid existing patents, and generate new intellectual property. Last week’s ruling will spur even more Crispr innovation, said Katherine Ann Rubino, chair of the life-sciences practice group for law firm Caldwell Intellectual Property Law.