CHICAGO – Troutman Pepper Locke secured a victory in a patent interference proceeding before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) involving foundational CRISPR gene-editing technology.
Troutman Pepper Locke represented the Broad Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and President and Fellows of Harvard College (Harvard University) in a dispute over CRISPR-Cas9 technology for use in eukaryotic cells, a core and highly valuable gene-editing application.
Following remand from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the PTAB reconsidered whether the opposing parties had established an earlier conception of the invention. The PTAB held that they had not and confirmed that the Broad Institute inventors were the first to reduce the invention to practice as of October 5, 2012, finding that the opponents’ early work did not constitute a complete and operative invention given the technology’s complexity and unpredictability.
The PTAB also rejected derivation arguments, confirming that the Broad Institute team independently developed the invention. The decision secures priority rights for the Broad Institute, Harvard University, and MIT on a core aspect of CRISPR technology.
The Troutman Pepper Locke team representing the Broad Institute, Harvard University, and MIT was led by Steven Trybus, Wasim Bleibel, and Andrew Zappia.
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