Open Source Biotechnology Project

What is Open Source Biotechnology?

Dramatic recent expansion of intellectual property protection for biotechnology research tools has led to concerns that future innovation will be blocked unless action is taken to preserve access to, and freedom to operate with, those tools that are important for further research and development.

Open Source licensing is a style of intellectual property management that has evolved in the past half-decade out of the Free Software movement, initiated in the early 1980s in response to restrictive copyright licensing practices adopted by commercial software developers. The Open Source approach seeks to preserve ongoing community access to proprietary software tools without precluding or discouraging commercial involvement in their development.

"Open Source Biotechnology" refers to the possibility of extending the principles of commerce-friendly, commons-based peer production exemplified by Open Source software development to the development of research tools in biomedical and agricultural biotechnology.

Selected publications and work in progress

Last update: May 2007

Books

J Hope, BioBazaar: Biotechnology and the Open Source Revolution, Harvard University Press (forthcoming January 2008).

[Note: This book offers the first sustained, theoretically and empirically grounded exploration of open source as a means of developing, licensing and commercialising biotechnology innovations. Release date is 15 January 2008. Pre-orders are available from Amazon.ca.]

J Hope, Open Source Biotechnology (PhD Thesis), The Australian National University, Canberra, 2004.

Book chapters

Janet Hope, "Open Source Licensing", chapter 2.6 in Krattiger et al. (ed.s), Intellectual Property Management in Health and Agricultural Innovation: A Handbook of Best Practices, MIHR-PIPRA, New York 2007.

[Notes:

1. This chapter was abridged by the IP Handbook editors. Click here for the original, longer version.

2. The IP Handbook is a suite of 157 chapters composed by nearly 200 authors from East, West, North and South and jointly sponsored by the Centre for the Management of Intellectual Property in Health R&D (MIHR) and the Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture (PIPRA). The books will be distributed for free to low- and middle-income countries (subject to availability of funding and support for distribution). A copy of the Handbook can be ordered online at www.ipHandbook.org. Click here for more information.]

J Hope, "Pharmaforschung mit Open-Source-Methoden" [Open source drug development], pp.73-86 in Lutterbeck et al. (ed.s), Open Source Jahrbuch 2007: Zwischen freier Software und Gesellschaftsmodell, Lehmanns Media, Berlin 2007.

Journal and magazine articles

D Nicol and J Hope "Cooperative Strategies for Facilitating Use of Patented Inventions in Biotechnology" (2006) 24 Law in Context 85-112.

[Note: This paper was part of a special journal issue edited by Matthew Rimmer, titled Patent Law and Biological Inventions.]

J Hope, "A new way to manage scientific intellectual property" GeneWatch Magazine 18(1) 2005.

Conference papers and powerpoint presentations

"Open source biotechnology: A strategy for innovation, intellectual property and capacity-building in Brazil", Brazilian Embassy, Canberra, July 19 2006.

J Hope, "Open source genetics: a conceptual framework ", International Workshop on Gene Patents and Clearing Models: From Concepts to Cases, Centre for Intellectual Property Rights, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, June 8-10 2006. [Click here for powerpoint presentation with transcript.]

J Hope, "Open source patent licenses for biotechnology: Why and how?" 14th Annual Conference on International Intellectual Property Law & Policy, Fordham University School of Law, New York, April 20 & 21, 2006. [Click here for powerpoint presentation with transcript.]

J Hope, "Open source collaboration for biotechnology and related industries", Expert roundtable on collaborative intellectual property rights mechanisms, OECD Biotechnology Division, Washington, December 8-9 2005.

J Hope, "Access to proprietary research tools in biotechnology: Is open source the answer?" Australian Centre for Intellectual Property in Agriculture, Canberra, 29 October 2002.

A note about this website

This website is maintained by Dr Janet Hope of the Centre for Governance of Knowledge and Development, Regulatory Institutions Network, Australian National University.

The site was originally produced in January 2003 as a tool to explain the nature of the Open Source Biotechnology research project to prospective informants. Since then it has proved to be of more general interest as a source of background material on the subject of open source biotechnology. For this reason the site has been preserved; however, much of the content has not been revised since 2003.

Extensive revisions are planned from mid-2007 to reflect the site's new purpose as a one-stop shop for news, links and articles relating to open source biotechnology. In the interim, visitors seeking up to date information are encouraged to view the material listed above under the heading "Selected publications and work in progress".

Comments and suggestions relating to any of the material on this site are warmly invited. Please email janet.hope@anu.edu.au .