The Nobelists appealed the finding, and yesterday the appeals court vacated it, saying the patent board applied the wrong standard and needs to reconsider the case.
According to the court, Doudna and Charpentier didn’t have to “know their invention would work” to get credit for conceiving it. What could matter more, the court said, is that it actually did work in the end.
In a statement, the University of California, Berkeley, applauded the call for a do-over.
“Today’s decision creates an opportunity for the PTAB to reevaluate the evidence under the correct legal standard and confirm what the rest of the world has recognized: that the Doudna and Charpentier team were the first to develop this groundbreaking technology for the world to share,” Jeff Lamken, one of Berkeley’s attorneys, said in the statement.
The Broad Institute posted a statement saying it is “confident” the appeals board “will again confirm Broad’s patents, because the underlying facts have not changed.”
The decision is likely to reopen the investigation into what was written in 13-year-old lab notebooks and whether Zhang based his research, in part, on what he learned from Doudna and Charpentier’s publications.
The case will now return to the patent board for a further look, although Sherkow says the court finding can also be appealed directly to the US Supreme Court.
