Yesterday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed with the PTAB that there is no interference-in-fact between the University of California’s pending application and twelve patents (and one pending application) assigned to The Broad Institute claiming reagents and methods for using CRISPR-Cas9 in eukaryotic cells (background on this case can be found here: https://www.medtechsip.com/blog-2/2018/3/13/crispr-cas9-technology).

This means that any third party seeking to commercialize the CRISPR-cas9 technology in the U.S. for use in eukaryotic cells (which, based on the nearly 2000 U.S. patent applications filed since 2014, using or otherwise developing, CRISPR-cas9 technology, is a lot)  will need a license from both the University of California and the Broad Institute.

And as for the stock prices, EDITAS (licensed from Broad Institute), CRISPR (licensed from Dr. Emannuelle Charpentier who is on the University of California's patents and has also retained her own rights in the patents), and INTELLIA (licensed from Caribou Biosciences who licensed the technology from the University of California and University of Vienna)  all seem to have recovered from a drop yesterday and the effective impact of this decision on R&D and the ensuing therapeutic tools remains to be seen. 17-1907