Copyrighting DNA Is a Bad Idea

A few years ago, molecular biologists Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, along with a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, were the first to file a patent for CRISPR-Cas9. It’s a DNA-editing technology adapted from the prokaryote immune system. Cas9 is a protein that can seek out and “cut” targeted gene strands with unprecedented ease and precision, allowing for customizable DNA. “It could allow us to cure genetic disease,” Doudna recently told an audience at a TED conference, in London.

But half a year after her and Charpenteir’s patent claim, another group, with ties to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, filed an expedited claim and ended up winning the patent the next year. Feeling cheated, the Doudna