유전자교정 기반 신육종기술의 글로벌 특허동향

Global Patent Trends in New Breeding Technology for Crop Improvement

New Breeding Technology (NBT) refers to gene editing technologies that are used to develop crop plants with beneficial traits,from biotic/abiotic resistance to nutritional enhancement, including zinc finger nucleases (ZFN), transcription activator-like effector nucleases,clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein 9, meganucleases, and oligo directed mutagenesis. A total of 1,119 valid NBT patents were analyzed in this study to examine global trends in the patent and market expansion strategies formajor patent applicants. Based on the claims specified, valid patents in each patent office were analyzed through the applicant’s country oforigin, field of technology, and plant/crop species. Patents claiming applications of CRISPR-based technology to major crop plants, includingrice, corn, wheat, tomato, and canola, have rapidly increased in the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) since 2013. The patent family size (PFS) can be used as an indicator of intellectual property (IP)-based market expansion strategies and target marketsof interests of patent applicants. Many university- and research-oriented institution Chinese applicants showed low PFS (2.1) because theyfiled patents mostly in CNIPA. In contrast, high PFS of US and German (DE) applicants such as Corteva Agriscience (US), KWS SAATAG (DE), Cellectics (FR), and Syngenta Participations AG (CH) represented their active strategies for global gene-edited crop market expansion. Corteva Agriscience (US, 238 patents) was the global leader in patents using NBT, ranging from ZFN to CRISPR-based technologies appliedto most major crops, including corn, soybean, and wheat.