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The rich couple, in their fifties, would have wanted to create a male heir to his fortune after the tragic death of their only son in a road accident.
The British shipped frozen semen from their dead son to the United States and used gender selection techniques – illegal in the UK – to produce male offspring via donor eggs and a surrogate.
The procedure raises serious ethical concerns regarding the gender selection process used in artificial fertility procedures.
The boy, who is now three, lives with his grandparents in the UK.
Dr. David Smotrich, global fertility specialist, who was responsible for the procedure, said the process was rarely conducted because it was unusual to genetically select the sex of the babies.
Dr. Smotrich helped the couple create their replacement grandson at his main IVF clinic in La Jolla, California.
The deceased son of the couple, who was not married, did not give his formal consent for his semen to be taken after his death, Dr. Smotrich said.
British doctors involved in the proceedings could face prosecution, legal experts said, because the process is illegal in Britain.
Dr. Smotrich said, "Producing a child with posthumous sperm is extremely rare, I only did it five times.
"This couple was desperate to find someone who could create an heir.They wanted a boy.
"What we have done is not available in the UK, where gender selection is not legal."
Professor Allan Pacey, former president of the British Fertility Society, told the Daily Mail: "If the son in this case was not treated by a clinic and did not sign the consent forms required for recovery, the storage and use of his sperm, then a criminal act probably took place.
"The clinician who extracted the sperm broke the law, as did the facility that was storing and exporting the sample."
The couple, who was, according to Dr. Smotrich, rich and "born to a remarkable family," lost his son during a tragic accident four years ago.
The corpse of their son was found only two days later, but once recovered, the couple hired an urologist to immediately freeze his sperm.
Sperm is able to survive in the body of the man until 72 hours after death.
One year later, the frozen sperm was exported to Dr. Smotrich's California clinic for genetic selection to produce a male grandson.
The doctor said: "The English couple lost their son in the most tragic circumstances.They desperately wanted an heir and a grandson.It was a privilege to be able to help them."
Dr. Smotrich was the first to complete the world's first IVF procedure. In 1997, he successfully created a test-tube baby for an American homosexual couple.
This is one of the first cases in the UK where sperm was extracted after the death of a father, although there have been such cases in India, in the United States. United States and Australia.
