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PATENTS

Worldwide CRISPR patent landscape shows strong geographical biases

Nature Biotechnology volume 37, pages 613–620 (2019)Cite this article

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A survey of the CRISPR patent landscape shows the improvement of technology, a diversity of potential sectors of application, and a new geopolitical balance of forces in the field.

On 17 August 2012 Jennifer Doudna’s group at the University of California, Berkeley and Emmanuelle Charpentier at Umeå University and formerly at the University of Vienna highlighted the underlying molecular mechanisms of the CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) system1. They demonstrated that this system can be used to produce double-stranded cuts at any precise DNA site in prokaryotic cells by combining a RNA guide with an endonuclease protein, CRISPR-associated protein 9 nuclease, or Cas9. Prior to this publication, on 25 May 2012, Berkeley, the University of Vienna and Jennifer Doudna had filed a patent application (2012US-61652086) describing the methods and applications for this RNA-directed site-specific DNA modification. Meanwhile, groups led by Feng Zhang at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University2 and George Church at Harvard3 demonstrated that the CRISPR system can be used to modify eukaryotic mammalian cells, including those of humans. On 12 December 2012 the Broad Institute, MIT and Feng Zhang filed a patent application (2012US-61736527) describing the invention of mammalian genome editing.

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Fig. 1: Geographical repartition and evolution of patent families related to the CRISPR gene editing system.
Fig. 2: Number of patent families related to the CRISPR system per technical category.

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Acknowledgements

The contributions of U. Del Ghingaro and M. Jamet to early stages of this work are gratefully acknowledged. The authors also thank M. Brites Teixeira for comments and Patent Pulse for allowing us temporary free access to their database.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Plant and Cell Physiology, University of Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, CEA, INRA, Grenoble, France

    Jacqueline Martin-Laffon & Marcel Kuntz

  2. IDEST, Paris-Sud University, Sceaux, France

    Agnès E. Ricroch

Authors
  1. Jacqueline Martin-Laffon
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  2. Marcel Kuntz
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  3. Agnès E. Ricroch
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Correspondence to Agnès E. Ricroch.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Note

Criteria used for patent selection and for further categorization

Supplementary Table 1

CRISPR patent compilation

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Martin-Laffon, J., Kuntz, M. & Ricroch, A.E. Worldwide CRISPR patent landscape shows strong geographical biases. Nat Biotechnol 37, 613–620 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-019-0138-7

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