"The UC’s filing covered gene editing with CRISPR, but it did not specifically cover eukaryotic cells—complex cells that include animal, plants, and humans—where all the lucrative applications are likely to be. The Broad’s patents did cover eukaryotic cells, and its lawyers argued that getting CRISPR to work in bacteria or free-floating DNA did not automatically mean it would work in the more complex environment. Hence, there was no inference—the decision that UC is now appealing."
"The patent board said in its decision that the achievement of the Broad’s Feng Zhang in inventing a way to use CRISPR to edit the genomes of mouse and human cells “would not have been obvious” from the invention by Doudna and Charpentier “because one of ordinary skill in the art would not have reasonably expected a CRISPR-Cas9 system to be successful” in those higher-order cells."
"The UC’s filing covered gene editing with CRISPR, but it did not specifically cover eukaryotic cells—complex cells that include animal, plants, and humans—where all the lucrative applications are likely to be. The Broad’s patents did cover eukaryotic cells, and its lawyers argued that getting CRISPR to work in bacteria or free-floating DNA did not automatically mean it would work in the more complex environment. Hence, there was no inference—the decision that UC is now appealing."
https://www.statnews.com/2017/02/15/crispr-patent-ruling/
"The patent board said in its decision that the achievement of the Broad’s Feng Zhang in inventing a way to use CRISPR to edit the genomes of mouse and human cells “would not have been obvious” from the invention by Doudna and Charpentier “because one of ordinary skill in the art would not have reasonably expected a CRISPR-Cas9 system to be successful” in those higher-order cells."