The Download: CRISPR in court, and the police’s ban-skirting AI
1 min read
Summary
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has decided that scientists Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier will get the opportunity to prove they should own the key patents on gene-editing tech CRISPR-Cas9.
Doudna and Charpentier were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020 for their roles in discovering CRISPR-Cas9.
But they lost the battle for the patents of the gene-editing system to Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, setting off a bitter dispute.
The Federal Circuit Court’s decision on Wednesday means the case will now pass to a new trial to consider the validity of the patents.
In other news from the world of technology:
Two former Trump administration officials were denied access to the US Copyright Office as it gears up for changes; Google knew it would be difficult to monitor how Israel might use its technology when it agreed to provide its cloud to the country; Spain does not yet know what caused its massive power blackout; and Apple is considering increasing the price of its iPhones.