So, just how much are those CRISPR patents ac­tu­al­ly worth?

There was a sin­gle ques­tion con­spic­u­ous­ly ab­sent in all the dis­cus­sion over last week’s CRISPR patent rul­ing (a sin­gle num­ber, re­al­ly): How much are the patents ac­tu­al­ly worth?

The US Patent and Trade­mark Of­fice rul­ing, af­ter years of le­gal wran­gling, that Feng Zhang and The Broad In­sti­tute — not Jen­nifer Doud­na, Em­manuelle Char­p­en­tier and the UC Berke­ley group — de­serve cred­it for in­vent­ing CRISPR/Cas9 gene edit­ing in hu­man cells will as­sured­ly mean a wind­fall for the aca­d­e­m­ic cen­ter and any com­pa­nies with which it’s as­so­ci­at­ed.

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