This is part of an ongoing dispute between Jinek et al at Berkeley and Zhang et al at the Broad Institute. Both groups did important work on CRISPR-CAS9, and now they&#x27;re fighting over credit, a patent, and (probably) a Nobel prize. Eric Lander, head of the Broad Institute, recently published an article &quot;The Heroes of CRISPR&quot; which emphasizes his own institution&#x27;s role and downplays Berkeley&#x27;s. Michael Eisen, a professor at Berkeley, wrote this article to emphasize Berkeley&#x27;s role and downplay Broad&#x27;s. Lander has, apparently, been in a fight like this before, with Craig Venter&#x27;s group over credit for being first to sequence the human genome.<p>My own position is that in a sane world, there would be no patent and the groups would share the Nobel. The patent ownership dispute is the only reason there has to be a fight at all, and while patents on techniques in biology aren&#x27;t nearly as absurd and destructive over patents on software, I think they&#x27;re almost certainly net negative overall.