The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Monday upheld a Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision awarding CRISPR-Cas9 patents on human and animal gene editing to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

The ruling settles an initial clash over foundational patents to technology that can be used to add or delete DNA from cells in order to fight diseases, reverse genetic mutations or to improve crop resistance to pests and drought.

The appellate court turned away a challenge from the University of California and research partner University of Vienna, which first developed CRISPR-Cas9 in bacterial cells. The university and its Munger, Tolles & Olson lawyers argued to the Federal Circuit that Broad simply applied its breakthrough to human cells using obvious, conventional techniques. UC sought a declaration that the inventions were patentably indistinct, and that UC's came first.