Cold Spring Settles A Patent Dispute

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory settled a patent malpractice suit against law firm Ropes & Gray and former partner Matthew P. Vincent just days before the case was to go to trial in a Massachusetts state court. CSHL originally sought $83 million when it sued in 2010; it settled the case for an undisclosed payment, a spokeswoman says. CSHL accused Vincent of bungling the filing of patents on short-hairpin RNA used to identify drug targets. Delays in issuing the patents cost it royalty payments, CSHL says. It hired Ropes & Gray in 2000, but the shRNA patents weren’t issued until 2012 after the lab hired new patent lawyers. Gregory Hannon, a CSHL molecular biologist, developed the technology for shRNA, which can turn off expression of most target genes.