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Comment by hprotagonist | Hacker News Reader

The Broad hands out licenses like candy if you're doing research.

If you're a commercial entity, it's 100M.

100M is an exaggeration but still I think that's fine. Enable people doing research for the benefit of others access to their stuff, but if someone is going to get rich off of it why not take a cut?

no, it's about right...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsherkow/2017/02/21/how-muc...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-24/the-gene-...

I was assuming they meant in general, not just CRSPR. $100m would be an enormous amount of money for the Broad and they license all kinds of stuff regularly

It is a nonprofit after all, I would much rather have them have the patent than a biotech company.

It's not remotely close to $100m

Editas acquired Cpf1 exclusivity for just $16 million upfront [1], in the form of cash plus a note. Intellia and Crispr Therapeutics, as two examples, will be able to license Cas9 from Broad for their various programs for a lot closer to $20m upfront plus royalties (so far as their therapy paths don't directly collide with Editas).

http://ir.editasmedicine.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=254265&p=irol-n...

Great way to guarantee only giant conglomerates can commercialize anything.

That's already true, and it's got nothing to do with licensing tech, and everything to do with how much money it costs to build out a supply chain.

Take from the rich, give to the poor.

Not all commercial entities are rich. If you were a scientist who found a novel application of CRISPR and wanted to develop a product and bring it to market, you'd be effectively screwed.

Well, you'd develop a proof of concept and angle to be acquihired by Editas. I don't know that that counts as "screwed".

Acquihired implies you being acquired for your talent, but then what happens to your idea? Editas could just scrap it.

Editas and Broad only control the US market. It's extremely unlikely Broad will acquire such a strong position in Europe or Asia (in fact it's practically guaranteed they will not).

If you had such a stellar therapy, and you couldn't get it past Editas, you'd go to Europe and partner with any number of a dozen other entities there that would be guaranteed to be interested (such as Novartis, which owns part of NTLA).

Just wait for the patent to expire. Or, don't wait, build out your product, and release it the second the patent expires. If it's a good enough idea, you'll be able to find investors willing to bridge the time gap.

That's generally how a functioning and equitable society works yes

Good luck getting funding for a Crispr startup.

I'd imagine that they'd be willing to license the technology to a startup for a stake in the company or something like that.

The bar is pretty high for anybody who wants to make a product based on in-human CRISPR: https://www.broadinstitute.org/partnerships/office-strategic...

In short, if you want to sell a product, Editas gets right of first refusal to license from Broad, and only if they refuse would the startup be able to proceed to license. If you just want to use CRISPR for in house research, you have to license it; no idea if the fees are prohibitive.

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