

CRISPR Patents Spark Fight to Control Genome Editing - ilamont
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/532796/who-owns-the-biggest-biotech-discovery-of-the-century/

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HarryHirsch
It doesn't take much to predict that CRISPR technology will end up just like
aptamers, a splendid approach that no one outside academia will ever touch
until the patents run out, for fear of endles litigation over IP.

Compare that to Prof Hanack and his phthalocyanines. He did not patent _a
thing_ , but happily consulted for anyone who would pay him. Precisely because
the technology was free it was widely adopted and Hanack made big bucks for
decades.

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throwawaykf05
I'm not sure that follows... based on TFA itself:

 _> Academic labs aren’t waiting for the patent claims to get sorted out.
Instead, they are racing to assemble very large engineering teams to perfect
and improve the genome-editing technique. On the Boston campus of Harvard’s
medical school, for instance, George Church, a specialist in genomics
technology, says he now has 30 people in his lab working on it._

See also Myriad and the BRCA patents. You'd think patents would be an
impediment to adoption, but turns out if something is really valuable, people
will use it regardless and fight (sometimes all the way to the Supreme Court!)
to keep using it.

