In a brief Order issued September 25, 2019, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board authorized the Junior Party (the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Vienna; and Emmanuelle Charpentier; collectively, "CVC") in Interference No. 106,115 to file a motion opposing Senior Party's (the Broad Institute, Harvard University and MIT, collectively, "the Broad") Substantive Motion No. 1 pursuant to 37 CFR §41.104(a).  As explained in an earlier post (see "Broad Institute Takes Its Turn in Interference Motion Practice"), the basis of this motion is 37 C.F.R. § 41.127(a)(1) and MPEP § 2308.03(b) (interference estoppel).  If granted, the motion would resolve the interference in the Broad's favor and could possibly preclude the Junior Party from pursuing priority of invention over eukaryotic cell embodiments of CRISPR technology.

The Order sets a deadline date of October 18, 2019, for filing an opposition, and extends the page limit from 25 to 32 pages (equivalent to the extended page limit the PTAB permitted the Broad to file in its Substantive Motion No. 1.  This Order is neither unexpected nor particularly informative; any decision other than outright denial of the Broad's Substantive Motion No. 1 requires granting CVC the right to have their say (and the Broad's motion is too substantive for that to occur).  But these circumstances make possible a reprise of the outcome in the earlier interference between these parties (No. 106,048), wherein CVC will be prevented from having the opportunity to have the PTAB determine on the merits whether CVC's inventors (including recognized inventors of CRISPR, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier) or Feng Zhang et al. were the first to invent applications of CRISPR for use in eukaryotic cells.

For additional information regarding this and other related topics, please see:

• "Broad Institute Takes Its Turn in Interference Motion Practice," September 24, 2019
• "CRISPR Interference: Motion Practice," September 11, 2019
• "PTAB Redeclares CRISPR Interference and Grants Leave for Some (But Not All) of Parties' Proposed Motions," August 29, 2019
• "University of California/Berkeley Granted Yet Another CRISPR Patent," August 25, 2019
• "CRISPR Interference Parties Propose Motions," August 1, 2019
• "Sigma-Aldrich Wants Its Piece of CRISPR Pie," July 21, 2019
• "New CRISPR Interference: The Details," July 8, 2019
• "CRISPR Battle Joined Again," July 1, 2019
• "Another U.S. Patent Issued for CRISPR," April 28, 2019
• "CRISPR Patent Watch," March 12, 2019
• "Whither CRISPR? University of California/Berkeley Granted Another CRISPR Patent," October 30, 2018
• "Regents of the University of California v. Broad Institute, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2018)," September 10, 2018
• "The CRISPR Chronicles -- Broad Institute Wins One and Loses One," January 24, 2018
• "Berkeley Files Opening Brief in CRISPR Appeal," July 31, 2017
• "University of California/Berkeley Appeals Adverse CRISPR Decision by PTAB," April 13, 2017
• "PTAB Decides CRISPR Interference in Favor of Broad Institute -- Their Reasoning," February 16, 2017
• "PTAB Decides CRISPR Interference -- No interference-in-fact," February 15, 2017