U.S. Patent No. 8,697,359 is assigned to the Broad Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and includes claims to the engineered CRISPR-Cas9 system and methods of using the system., US Patent No. 8,697,359 (Broad) 1. A method of altering expression of at least one gene product comprising: introducing into a eukaryotic cell containing and expressing a DNA molecule having a target sequence and encoding the gene product an engineered, non-naturally occurring Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)--CRISPR associated (Cas) (CRISPR-Cas) system , While Doudna’s and Charpentier’s groups may have published first and have received a number of awards for their work in this field, it is Zhang who has been awarded the first patent on the basic CRISPR technology – US Patent No. 8,697,359, ‘CRISPR-Cas systems and methods for altering expression of gene products’ (the “Zhang patent , The invention provides for systems, methods, and compositions for altering expression of target gene sequences and related gene products. Provided are vectors and vector systems, some of which encode one or more components of a CRISPR complex, as well as methods for the design and use of such vectors., The invention provides for systems, methods, and compositions for altering expression of target gene sequences and related gene products. Provided are vectors and vector systems, some of which encode one or more components of a CRISPR complex, as well as methods for the design and use of such vectors., Just a few months later, in December 2012, the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University filed their first CRISPR-related patent application under fast-track review process. Broad Institute further filed 11 more applications. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) granted a patent (US Patent No. 8,697,359) to Broad Researchers on .