Editas IPO Advances Amid Patent Dispute

Editas Medicine has filed for a $100 million initial public offering of stock. If it launches the IPO, Editas will be the first of the inventor-backed firms created around CRISPR gene-editing technology to go public. Founded in 2013, Editas has a license to the first foundational CRISPR patent, awarded to MIT’s Feng Zhang. A few days before the filing, a federal patent examiner recommended that the Patent Trial & Appeal Board institute an interference proceeding over rights to the technology between Zhang’s patent and a competing application filed by Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley. The board often follows such recommendations. Doing so would bring about one of the biggest patent fights in the biotech world.