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Published online 3 June 2009 | Nature 459, 620-621 (2009) | doi:10.1038/459620a
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Mouse patent sparks 'uncivil' spat
Academic institutes lock horns in legal action over mutant mice.
The Jackson Laboratory, a non-profit genetics research centre in Bar Harbor, Maine, is embroiled in its first ever patent dispute — with another non-profit research institute.
"It is almost unheard of for one academic institute to sue another over patent infringement," says the Jackson Lab's corporate lawyer, David Einhorn, who described the dispute on 21 May at a meeting in Rome on sharing data and resources for functional genomics.
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Interesting story, but the statement that Jackson Lab doesn't patent isn't quite correct. A quick assignee name search of the USPTO website retrieved several patents assigned to Jackson Lab going back to 1983. Some of these were co-assigned to research partners or were the products of NIH grants, so the decision to patent may not have been JL's.