Japan’s IP High Court Revives Broad Institute CRISPR Patent, Overturning JPO Invalidation on Priority Rights

Japan’s Intellectual Property High Court (IP High Court) on April 14, 2026, issued a ruling in favor of the Broad Institute, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University, overturning a Japan Patent Office (JPO) decision that had invalidated a key CRISPR-related patent held by those institutions. The court found that the Broad Institute could validly rely on earlier U.S. patent filings as the basis for its priority claim, a question that had been the central point of dispute in the Japanese proceedings.

The CRISPR patent dispute between the Broad Institute/MIT/Harvard group and the University of California/Jennifer Doudna group has been litigated across multiple jurisdictions for years, with courts and patent offices reaching different conclusions in different countries. In the United States, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) upheld a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) determination that awarded Broad Institute separate patent rights covering CRISPR applications in eukaryotic cells. The European Patent Office has taken a more mixed approach, granting some CRISPR patents to each camp while also revoking certain Broad Institute patents through opposition proceedings.

In Japan, South Korean biotechnology company ToolGen filed an invalidation trial before the JPO challenging the Broad Institute’s patent. The JPO granted the invalidation request, finding that the Broad Institute could not legitimately claim priority to earlier U.S. filings due to questions about the transfer of priority rights. That ruling invalidated the patent under examination.

The Broad Institute and its co-patentees appealed the JPO decision to the IP High Court. According to MLex’s reporting of April 14, 2026, the court reversed the JPO’s determination, finding that the Broad Institute’s institutions could validly rely on the earlier U.S. priority filings. The court declined to adopt ToolGen’s objection to the legitimacy of the priority rights transfer.

The practical significance of the ruling is substantial. If the decision stands, the Broad Institute will hold valid patent rights over core CRISPR technology in Japan. Companies in Japan engaged in biotechnology research and product development using CRISPR — including pharmaceutical companies, agricultural biotechnology firms, and research institutions — may need to revisit their licensing arrangements in light of this ruling.

Japan’s role in the CRISPR patent landscape is particularly important given the country’s substantial biotechnology industry and the active research community in gene editing. The JPO had previously issued decisions in both directions on CRISPR-related patents, and the IP High Court’s reversal adds another data point to the complex international picture. Background on the broader history of the CRISPR patent dispute in Japan is available from MONDAQ’s analysis.

ToolGen retains the theoretical right to petition Japan’s Supreme Court for further review, though such proceedings would be limited to questions of law. The ruling addresses patent validity, not infringement, and any determination of whether specific products or research activities infringe the revived patent would require separate proceedings.

This case illustrates a recurring challenge in the CRISPR patent wars: the same foundational technology claims are being adjudicated independently by patent offices and courts in each jurisdiction, and the outcomes are not uniform. Practitioners advising companies that use CRISPR technology must track the patent landscape country by country rather than relying on a single global outcome. Japan’s IP High Court ruling aligns the Japanese outcome more closely with the U.S. result, where the Broad Institute has largely prevailed on the question of rights in eukaryotic CRISPR applications.