Two important unanswered questions are whether the cancer‐associated overexpression of KCNQ1OT1 and other imprinted lncRNA arises from the imprinted allele, which normally does not express the lncRNA, and whether the overexpressed lncRNA has tumor‐promoting activities primarily through gene expression deregulation in cis or global transcriptome effects in trans. The gene discussed is KCNQ1OT1; the disease is cancer.