Team:BostonU/HP/Silver
During our first few weeks of iGEM, we attended a conference on mammalian synthetic biology. Part of this conference included a panel discussion of intellectual copyright and patent law; however, most of the conference goers did not attend this segment. We spoke with several professors in synthetic biology at Boston University about their perspectives on this matter. You can hear their interviews below. A link to full pdf transcripts of the interviews can be found at the bottom of this page.
Based on these discussions, we learned that this lack of participation could stem from a lack of interest or a lack of understanding of intellectual property rights. However, this subject area is vital to synthetic biology and intellectual property rights can have serious consequences for both researchers and stakeholders. Therefore, we teamed up with our sister team, BostonU Hardware, to create a blog called "Who Owns What" to help educate the synthetic biology community in this area. Hover over the buttons below to see a description of each post, and click on the button to load a pdf of each post. Our full blog with each post can be found on wordpress: here
.Our post, “A General Overview of Intellectual Property in Synthetic Biology: Part 1” began our blog series by going over the basics of intellectual property. In essence, the post provided needed background and definitions such as patent, copyright and trademark, as well as a roadmap to future posts. Click the button above to load a pdf version of this post.
Our post, “A General Overview of Intellectual Property in Synthetic Biology: Part 2” continued the flurry of necessary definitions from Part 1, but went farther and began drawing comparisons between intellectual property in synthetic biology and its cousin, software. Click the button above to load a pdf version of this post.
Our post, “IP in Synthetic Biology: Part 1” offers a brief history of intellectual property from the beginning of such laws in Venice in the late 1400s to the beginning of the copyright and patent system in the U.S. in the 1790s. The post poses questions to the reader to induce a discussion on how intellectual property laws have expanded in breadth of protection since the beginning. Click the button above to load a pdf version of this post.
Coming Soon!
