CRISPR

If something is "difficult" to do, it likely requires considerable capital investment. Shouldn't the commercial returns go to the entity that made said investment? It is important not to mix up the concepts of discovery, invention, and patent, in this case. It's worth noting that, per my other thread here, this all has been heavily adjudicated by the Supreme Court, with much resting on the "expectations of success." It seems that in such matters the nitty gritty details of the particular situation matter, and it can be hard to discern innovation from discipline. In actuality, courts appear to have sided more often with parties that have "reduced to practice" the claimed IP.

Also - see here https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-1350.ZS.html and here https://www.pillsburylaw.com/images/content/6/5/v2/65484/Whe... Would definitely read the Transcript and Decision on Motions thoroughly from the prior posted link. The weight given to contemporaneous statements regarding "likelihood of success" is paramount. Bottom line - UC muffed the punt, imho, and their counsel didn't make things any better by taking the tack they did. Broad/Zhang drew a straight bead on the commercial IP from the get go and outmaneuvered Doudna/UC from what I can tell. Appellate court could certainly disagree, however, I believe they have a tough hill to climb in light of the record. From a scientific discovery perspective, it seems Doudna/Charpentier are likely to garner the lion's share of credit and accolades, but from a commercial perspective, I do believe Broad will come out on top. Doudna/UC is in a tough spot to claim that it was confident that CRISPR would work in eurkaryotic environments, and Broad had the jump with a better lab setup (and Doudna being crystallography focused). I also believe there is a bit of high level geo-politics at play here considering the Max Plank Institute and (Berlin) Univ. Vienna's involvement with the UC claim.

Required reading if you want to really dig on this - https://acts.uspto.gov/ifiling/PublicView.jsp?identifier=106...

After having spent several weeks studying the case law and patent procedures, I have come to the conclusion that Doudna/UC were naive and sloppy in their original approach to the CRISPR IP and public positioning. Morality aside, I believe Broad has the stronger U.S. claim, at least legally speaking. It's typically not the court's position to rectify the mis-steps of others. The processes are what they are, and the law is what it is, and the onus is on the claimant to properly protect themselves.