[hmahncke]

There's a big difference between exclusive licensing and non-exclusive licensing. New drugs (like penicillin) tend to be exclusively licensed because of the costs involved in regulatory approval, and that can slow down technology diffusion - the wrong licensee can sink the technology.

But enabling technologies (like CRSPR) get licensed non-exclusively, particularly when the patent holder is an academic institution. If the patents around CRSPR are licensed non-exclusively, at reasonably prices, and with appropriate treatment for academic researchers, these patents aren't going to slow science down.

A good example is the original polymerase chain reaction patents, which were held by Cetus. Despite lots of legal arguments, PCR was always widely available.

Here's a nice analysis of the PCR patent situation and its effects on technology diffusion: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1523369/

[Malarkey73]

There is a big difference between PCR and CRISPR though. Whilst PCR is effectively a reading technology, CRISPR is a writing technology. For many medical technologies then PCR is a standalone diagnostic tool (it is HUGE in mol. biol., pathology, biotech). However you can quite easily see CRISPR being a core tech within revolutionary deliverable medical treatments.

As Eisen points out its kind of odd that the group who rush to do the obvious human implementation should then get a share of all this potential... Not really a novel invention by that point in my opinion.

[hmahncke]

Yes, exclusively licensing CRISPR on an indication-by-indication basis as a therapeutic itself (as someone below has suggested has already happened by Broad) would be worrisome.