The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced last month that a set of patents granted to the Broad Institute covering CRISPR editing of eukaryotic genomes does not interfere with patent claims filed by the University of California–Berkeley and the University of Vienna. The win for the Broad and its partners, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), concludes a year-long battle over the breakthrough technology that has already spawned a host of startup companies seeking to use CRISPR to develop treatments for human and animal health as well as agricultural applications. “Broad has persuaded us that the parties claim patentably distinct subject matter,” read the decision of USPTO's Patent Trial and Appeal Board, adding “Broad provided sufficient evidence to show that its claims, which are all limited to CRISPR-Cas9 systems in a eukaryotic environment, are not drawn to the same invention as [University of California's] claims, which are all directed to CRISPR-Cas9 systems not restricted to any environment.” In a statement, Berkeley said it respected the board's decision, but maintained that Berkeley biochemist Jennifer Doudna and her collaborator Emmanuel Charpentier, now at Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, were the first to invent the CRISPR system. Doudna said that the ruling would allow USPTO to move forward on her patent application, and that it would “likely” issue the patent, potentially forcing companies eager to use CRISPR to pay licensing fees to both UC and the Broad. “They have a patent on green tennis balls. We [likely] will have a patent on all tennis balls,” she said. As Nature Biotechnology went to press, Berkeley had not indicated if they would appeal the decision.