MPEG LA Initiative to Address CRISPR Licensing

World licensing leader MPEG LA, LLC announced today an initiative to address the need for an efficient one-stop license alternative around CRISPR, a breakthrough technology that enables cellular DNA to be edited quickly and inexpensively. Some CRISPR patents are currently the subject of an interference proceeding (No. 106048) among various patent holders and applicants before the US Patent and Trademark Office.

"CRISPR's wide range of potential applications in medicine and agriculture, and the steadily increasing volume of intellectual property in the field, point to the need for a one-stop licensing platform to reduce litigation risk and provide efficiency, transparency and predictability to scientists and businesses worldwide," said MPEG LA President and CEO Larry Horn. "Our worldwide licensing infrastructure, trusted reputation for independence, experience, impartiality and results with patent pools, and relationships with industry and academia, including life sciences, position MPEG LA to deliver a licensing solution for the life sciences market as it did with digital video for the consumer electronics market."

"We are mapping the CRISPR Cas-9 patent landscape as a tool for identifying essential patents to be licensed together in a single transaction for various genome engineering applications on a worldwide basis," said Kristin Neuman, MPEG LA Executive Director of Biotechnology Licensing, "and will incorporate other genomic engineering technologies as they emerge."

MPEG LA welcomes the participation of the CRISPR community. A mapping reference model defining the license coverage that will free developers to focus on creating quality-of-life enhancing products while compensating inventors is expected to be available soon. Updates may be found on MPEG LA's CRISPR page at http://www.mpegla.com/main/pid/CRISPR/default.aspx. For more information, please email biotech@mpegla.com.