IN THE
NEWS
BIOS – a new way in
biotechnology?
Magdalena Skipper
http://www.bios.net
https://www.bioforge.net
BIOS — Biological
Innovation for Open Society — is a project that aims to revolutionize
biological inventions by providing alternatives to intellectual property
protection.
BIOS was created by
CAMBIA, an Australian not-for-profit biotechnology group that was the talk of
the media when it published a plant transformation strategy that does not
depend on the patented Agrobacterium. The new method is protected by an
open-source license that allows users to benefit from an invention without the
obstacles associated with patent protection, while safeguarding the rights of
the inventor.
But there is much more
to BIOS. Its extensive web site defines it as "a new initiative [...] to
extend the metaphor and concepts of Open Source to biotechnology and other
forms of innovation in biology".
The Patent Lens part
of the web site includes a wealth of information on intellectual property. You
can search for patents and find out about intellectual property policies and
practices. The Technology Landscape link will take you to documents that
describe the state of patent protection surrounding selected key areas of
research, although, for now, the focus is mainly on plant biotechnologies.
There are even tutorials, for example, on how to read a patent!
BioForge — a new
community for biological innovation — is an important part of the BIOS
initiative. It is a virtual platform for worldwide collaboration and resource
sharing, within the open-source philosophy of BIOS.
If you have an
inventive streak in you or had your research options limited by patents, this
is the web site for you. Open Source has had a huge impact on the software
industry; the time has come to test it in the biotechnology
world.