🤖 CRISPR patent chaos gets routed around by open source
The USPTO ruling for Broad/MIT over Berkeley leaves public gene-editing companies holding licences to technology they may not actually own, and the industry responds the way software did to proprietary operating systems: an open-source CRISPR-Cas9 alternative gets adopted broadly and the patent moat stops being worth what the market pays for it. Friedberg is already running the open-source version in one of his own plant-editing companies.
0
CONVICTION
peaked 50.4 WATCH
DORMANT
band
▼ SHORT NTLA
expression · bearish tech
HIT
outcome · R +31.0% · α +33.0%
2023-03-05
window closed
⚖ Why this verdict
fully deterministic — evaluate.py replays this from daily closes; nothing below is editable or hand-set
- Window: 2022-03-05 → 2023-03-05 — first mention + 12-month horizon, then the window locks.
- The call: ▼ SHORT NTLA (primary play). NTLA fell 31.0% over the window → direction-adjusted R = +31.0% (the call made money).
- Benchmark: holding SPY over the same window returned -2.1%
→ α = +31.0 − (-2.1) = +33.0%
— what this call made or lost against just owning the index. This is the number the verdict uses.
Stock-selection read: +28.9% — did NTLA move the predicted way relative to the market. The two only differ on a SHORT: this call beat the index outright.
- Rule fired:
▶ HIT — R ≥ +10% AND α ≥ +5 ✓ (R 31.0, α 33.0)· PARTIAL — R ≥ +5% OR α ≥ 0· MISS — everything else
- Credit: supporters of a HIT earn 1.0 each, opposers the inverse — this feeds the scoreboard weights. supported: Chamath, Friedberg | proxy-sensitive: CRSP→PARTIAL (+7.9%)
Conviction timeline
bands: green ≥ 65 · watch ≥ 45 · ember ≥ 15
Plays vs SPY · % since first mention (2022-03-05)
Plays
| expression | symbol | kind | relevance | rationale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ▼ SHORT | NTLA | stock | PRIMARY | Intellia's platform sits on the Berkeley/Doudna licence chain the ruling just undercut |
| ▼ SHORT | ARKG | etf | adjacent | the genomics basket carries the whole cohort's licensing risk |
| ▼ SHORT | CRSP | stock | adjacent | same Charpentier/Berkeley licence lineage, same IP overhang |
Mention log
Friedberg
tech w=1.08 · n=65
· E71 (2022-03-05) · explicit_prediction · strength 2
▶ 1:27:55
SUPPORT
“it turns out that if this ruling is to be believed, they actually have a license to a technology that they may not actually have a license to. ... many more companies, many more businesses are embracing that open-source alternative. I don't think that we see this turning out to be any different than what we saw with the proliferation of Linux in computer software”
Chamath
tech w=0.90 · n=83
· E71 (2022-03-05) · sentiment · strength 2
▶ 1:25:59
SUPPORT
“if you are a company that wants to build a CRISPR-CAS9 gene editing thing, look, there's a lot of situations where a single point edit or a broad edit can have a meaningful change in your health. So these are businesses that should exist. You didn't know what to do because if you license the IP from the wrong person, you get sued. And many companies now are trying to license both sets of patents.”
Who built this conviction
each voice's total force on the score — supports and opposes from every mention, weighted exactly as the replay applied them · share = % of all mention-driven movement
⏳ decay drained -42.0 over the idea's life — that's time passing, attributed to no one
Score events
| episode | kind | Δ | after | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E71 2022-03-05 | init | +37.7 | 37.7 | E71 born by Friedberg (explicit_prediction x2) [w=1.08] |
| E71 2022-03-05 | reinforce | +12.7 | 50.4 | E71 Chamath support x2 (new voice) [w=0.90] |
| E72 2022-03-19 | decay | -2.0 | 48.3 | E72 silent |
| E73 2022-03-26 | decay | -1.9 | 46.4 | E73 silent |
| E74 2022-04-01 | decay | -1.9 | 44.6 | E74 silent |
| E75 2022-04-09 | decay | -1.8 | 42.8 | E75 silent |
| E76 2022-04-16 | decay | -1.7 | 41.1 | E76 silent |
| E77 2022-04-23 | decay | -1.6 | 39.4 | E77 silent |
| E78 2022-04-30 | decay | -1.6 | 37.8 | E78 silent |
| E79 2022-05-07 | decay | -1.5 | 36.3 | E79 silent |
| E80 2022-05-13 | decay | -1.5 | 34.9 | E80 silent |
| E81 2022-05-23 | decay | -1.4 | 33.5 | E81 silent |
| E82 2022-05-24 | decay | -1.3 | 32.1 | E82 silent |
| E84 2022-06-24 | decay | -1.3 | 30.9 | E84 silent |
| E85 2022-06-30 | decay | -1.2 | 29.6 | E85 silent |
| E86 2022-07-08 | decay | -1.2 | 28.4 | E86 silent |
| E87 2022-07-14 | decay | -1.1 | 27.3 | E87 silent |
| E88 2022-07-22 | decay | -1.1 | 26.2 | E88 silent |
| E89 2022-07-29 | decay | -1.0 | 25.2 | E89 silent |
| E90 2022-08-05 | decay | -1.0 | 24.2 | E90 silent |
| E91 2022-08-13 | decay | -1.0 | 23.2 | E91 silent |
| E92 2022-08-20 | decay | -0.9 | 22.3 | E92 silent |
| E93 2022-08-26 | decay | -0.9 | 21.4 | E93 silent |
| E94 2022-09-01 | decay | -0.9 | 20.5 | E94 silent |
| E95 2022-09-10 | decay | -0.8 | 19.7 | E95 silent |
| E96 2022-09-17 | decay | -0.8 | 18.9 | E96 silent |
| E97 2022-09-23 | decay | -0.8 | 18.1 | E97 silent |
| E98 2022-10-01 | decay | -0.7 | 17.4 | E98 silent |
| E99 2022-10-07 | decay | -0.7 | 16.7 | E99 silent |
| E100 2022-10-14 | decay | -0.7 | 16.1 | E100 silent |
| E101 2022-10-22 | decay | -0.6 | 15.4 | E101 silent |
| E102 2022-10-29 | decay | -0.6 | 14.8 | E102 silent |
| E103 2022-11-05 | decay | -0.6 | 14.2 | E103 silent |
| E105 2022-11-19 | decay | -0.6 | 13.6 | E105 silent |
| E106 2022-12-03 | decay | -0.5 | 13.1 | E106 silent |
| E107 2022-12-10 | decay | -0.5 | 12.6 | E107 silent |
| E108 2022-12-16 | decay | -0.5 | 12.1 | E108 silent |
| E109 2022-12-24 | decay | -0.5 | 11.6 | E109 silent |
| E110 2023-01-06 | decay | -0.5 | 11.1 | E110 silent |
| E111 2023-01-13 | decay | -0.4 | 10.7 | E111 silent |
| E112 2023-01-20 | decay | -0.4 | 10.2 | E112 silent |
| E113 2023-01-27 | decay | -0.4 | 9.8 | E113 silent |
| E114 2023-02-04 | decay | -0.4 | 9.4 | E114 silent |
| E115 2023-02-11 | decay | -0.4 | 9.1 | E115 silent |
| E116 2023-02-17 | decay | -0.4 | 8.7 | E116 silent |
| E118 2023-03-03 | decay | -0.3 | 8.4 | E118 silent |