The patent trap? Open science advocates want CRISPR technology to be free - Health - CBC News

"CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is a revolutionary gene editing tool that allows scientists to edit DNA with unparalleled ease and precision. Two prominent public institutions — MIT and Harvard's Broad Institute and University of California Berkeley — are locked in a legal cage match, fighting to privatize CRISPR.

It could be months before a victor emerges, but the winner will walk away with billions of dollars in licensing fees and total control over one of the world's most important scientific discoveries."