Ó³»­´«Ã½

— The Rockefeller University and the Ó³»­´«Ã½ of MIT and Harvard have settled their disagreement regarding inventorship and ownership of certain Ó³»­´«Ã½ filings relating to the use of the CRISPR-Cas9 system in eukaryotic cells. Rockefeller believed that its faculty member Dr. Luciano Marraffini, co-author with Ó³»­´«Ã½â€™s Dr. Feng Zhang, on a seminal paper published in Science in 2013, , should have been maintained in these Ó³»­´«Ã½ eukaryote filings.

The parties agreed to submit their dispute to binding arbitration, in which it was decided that inventorship on Ó³»­´«Ã½â€™s eukaryote filings in US Patent 8,697,359, and Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications PCT/US2013/074667, PCT/US2013/074691, PCT/US2013/074736, PCT/US2013/074743, PCT/US2013/074812, PCT/US2013/074819, PCT/US2013/074825, PCT/US2013/074790 or PCT/US2013/074800; or US application 15/349,603 will remain unchanged. The Ó³»­´«Ã½ manages a robust CRISPR-Cas9 patent portfolio including key CRISPR-Cas9 patents in the United States and Europe relating to use of CRISPR-Cas9 in eukaryotic cells.

In addition, the Ó³»­´«Ã½ portfolio includes filings relating to the use of the CRISPR-Cas9 system in prokaryotic cells, on which Drs. Marraffini and Zhang are co-inventors and Rockefeller and Ó³»­´«Ã½ are joint owners.

The Ó³»­´«Ã½ and Rockefeller make CRISPR tools freely available to the academic and nonprofit communities and issue non-exclusive licenses for most types of commercial research. In July, 2017, the institutions joined discussions to create a worldwide CRISPR-Cas9 licensing pool. For human therapeutics, the Ó³»­´«Ã½ places limits on exclusivity through its Inclusive Innovation model, which offers one licensee exclusive use for a defined period (two years), followed by an open call for applications by other groups. In the case of CRISPR-Cas9, the two-year exclusive period has already ended. Parties interested in licensing the technology are invited to apply through the Ó³»­´«Ã½ website.

---

About The Rockefeller University

The Rockefeller University was founded in 1901 by John D. Rockefeller with the credo, ‘Science for the benefit of humanity’. Rockefeller’s 82 faculty laboratories, located on its 14 acre Manhattan campus, conduct highly innovative research addressing the most critical questions in the life sciences and medicine. Rockefeller scientists have made many of the world’s most revolutionary contributions to biology and medicine, and have been awarded 25 Nobel Prizes, 22 Lasker Awards, and 20 National Medals of Science.

About the Ó³»­´«Ã½ of MIT and Harvard

Ó³»­´«Ã½ of MIT and Harvard was launched in 2004 to empower this generation of creative scientists to transform medicine. The Ó³»­´«Ã½ seeks to describe all the molecular components of life and their connections; discover the molecular basis of major human diseases; develop effective new approaches to diagnostics and therapeutics; and disseminate discoveries, tools, methods, and data openly to the entire scientific community.

Founded by MIT, Harvard, Harvard-affiliated hospitals, and the visionary Los Angeles philanthropists Eli and Edythe L. Ó³»­´«Ã½, the Ó³»­´«Ã½ includes faculty, professional staff, and students from throughout the MIT and Harvard biomedical research communities and beyond, with collaborations spanning over a hundred private and public institutions in more than 40 countries worldwide. For further information about the Ó³»­´«Ã½, go to .