When initially building our CRISPR-Cas patent landscape database over this summer, we were surprised by some unusual inventor patterns. As we now monitoring deeper into this data subset for our customers, we are further amazed by how some inventors and applicants are already strongly defending their IP position by various means in the diversity of international patent prosecution law practices – an IP management lesson of its own!
Of course, patent applications directly out of pioneering academic research are often more complex to deal with because of the difficulty to shape the prior art landscape on an emerging technology on the one hand, and frequent interferences with scientific publications on the other hand (for a comprehensive review of early publication works and companion patents in the emerging CRISPR/Cas-9 IP landscape in March 2014, you can check the report from Wolf Greenfield).
Overall, the patterns we observe in the CRISPR-Cas patent landscape are unusual at such an early stage of the innovation cycle, and it certainly reflects the unprecedented expectations put on these core genome engineering technologies by the life sciences community at large, as the number of potential applications keep on developing, including possible therapeutic use.
In such a pioneering environment, the first IP management task of course consists in securing IP protection by filing as soon as possible in the international race for inventions. We observe that just in the past 6 months, the number of published patent families on CRISPR-Cas have increased by 50%, while early licensing and M&A deals have been announced; and this is just the visible part of the iceberg, as part of the IP battlefield is now moving directly at prosecution stage in the national patent offices… a somehow more tactical ground, but no less fierce, as far as we can judge out of our past three months monitoring at the USPTO, EPO, and WIPO.
To help you orienteering into this fast evolving IP landscape, IPStudies now offers a CRISPR-Cas dedicated patent monitoring service. The service can be subscribed on a monthly or yearly basis and comprises an online patent database access to the latest set of patent publications, plus our strategic highlights out of our dedicated patent office data analysis. For more information, check our studies order page here!