Overly broad patents must be reined in The much-publicized dispute over patent rights to CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology highlights tensions that have been percolating for almost four decades, since the U.S. Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 invoked patents as a mechanism for promoting commercialization of federally funded research. With the encouragement provided by Bayh-Dole, academic scientists and their research institutions now race in dual competitive domains: the quest for glory in academic research and in the patent sphere. Yet, a robust economic literature (1, 2) argues that races are often socially wasteful; the racing parties expend duplicative resources, in terms of both the research itself and the legal fees spent attempting to acquire patents, all in the pursuit of what may be a modest acceleration of invention. For CRISPR, and future races involving broadly useful technologies for which it may set a precedent, the relationship between these competitive domains needs to be parsed carefully. On the basis of legal maneuvers thus far, it appears that the litigants will try for broad rights; public benefit will depend on courts reining them in and, when broad patents slip through, on updating Bayh-Dole's pro-commercialization safeguards with underused features of the Act.

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为学术荣誉和专利而战：CRISPR 的教训

必须控制过于广泛的专利 广为人知的 CRISPR-Cas9 基因编辑技术专利权纠纷凸显了近四十年来一直在渗透的紧张局势，自 1980 年美国 Bayh-Dole 法案援引专利作为促进发展的机制以来联邦资助研究的商业化。在 Bayh-Dole 的鼓励下，学术科学家和他们的研究机构现在在双重竞争领域展开竞争：在学术研究和专利领域寻求荣耀。然而，强有力的经济文献 (1, 2) 认为种族通常会造成社会浪费；竞争各方在研究本身和试图获得专利所花费的法律费用方面花费了重复的资源，所有这些都是为了追求发明的适度加速。对于 CRISPR，以及涉及广泛有用技术的未来竞赛可能会开创先例，因此需要仔细分析这些竞争领域之间的关系。从目前的法律手段来看，当事人似乎会争取广泛的权利；公共利益将取决于法院对他们的控制，以及当广泛的专利漏掉时，取决于更新 Bayh-Dole 的商业化保障措施，以利用该法案的未充分利用的特征。