SHARING REAGENTS:NIH, DuPont Declare Truce in Mouse War

doi:10.1126/science.281.5381.1261a

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SHARING REAGENTS:
NIH, DuPont Declare Truce in Mouse War

Eliot Marshall

A contentious, 2-year legal wrangle that set molecular biologists against company lawyers ended last week. The National Institutes of Health has hammered out a memorandum of understanding with DuPont Pharmaceuticals Co. of Wilmington, Delaware, that lifts several restrictions DuPont had placed on the use of mice created with the company's patented "cre-lox" system--an efficient method of editing DNA at a specific site on the mouse genome. Researchers will now be able to share the mice more freely and DuPont has relaxed its proprietary claims on inventions made with the mice. The new rules apply to all researchers who receive federal funding.

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