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're fighting over credit, a patent, and (probably) a Nobel prize. Eric Lander, head of the Broad Institute, recently published an article "The Heroes of CRISPR" which emphasizes his own institution's role and downplays Berkeley's. Michael Eisen, a professor at Berkeley, wrote this article to emphasize Berkeley's role and downplay Broad's. Lander has, apparently, been in a fight like this before, with Craig Venter'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't nearly as absurd and destructive over patents on software, I think they're almost certainly net negative overall.