Synthetic biology and intellectual property rights: Six recommendations

Abstract

On 26th November 2013, the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation organized an expert meeting on “Synthetic Biology & Intellectual Property Rights” in Copenhagen sponsored by the European Research Area Network in Synthetic Biology (ERASynBio). The meeting brought together ten experts from different countries with a variety of professional backgrounds to discuss emerging challenges and opportunities at the interface of synthetic biology and intellectual property rights. The aim of this article is to provide a summary of the major issues and recommendations discussed during the meeting.

Combinatorial metabolic pathway assembly approaches and toolkits for modular assembly

“…The issue of intellectual property (IP) can potentially affect several aspects of pathway assembly, particularly the use of parts, vector backbones and standards (Nielsen et al, 2018). An IP expert meeting (Minssen et al, 2015) made six recommendations for the synthetic biology community in this regard, such as encouraging scientists to employ tools that are unencumbered with IP rights when developing foundational technologies. The BioBrick™ Public Agreement facilitates the free sharing of DNA sequences across the synthetic biology community (https://biobricks.org/bpa) while the more recent Open Material Transfer Agreement (http://openmta.org/) provides a legal tool for sharing physical biomaterials in a simpler and less restrictive way than typical arrangements allow (Kahl et al, 2018).…”

Intellectual property rights, standards and data exchange in systems biology

“…IPRs regularly figure prominently in scientific journals and at scientific conferences and lead to dedicated workshops to increase the awareness and "IPR savviness" of scientists. In 2015, Biotechnology Journal published a report from an expert meeting on "Synthetic Biology & Intellectual Property Rights" organized by the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation sponsored by the European Research Area Network (ERA-Net) in Synthetic Biology (ERASynBio), in which we provided a number of recommendations for a variety of stakeholders [1]. The current article offers some deeper reflections about the interface between IPRs, standards and data exchange in systems biology (SysBio) resulting from an Expert Meeting funded by another ERA-Net, ERASysAPP.…”

“…In contrast with SynBio , IPR‐related issues have so far not received a lot of attention within the SysBio scientific community. However, as IPRs are highly relevant in collaborations between academia and industry, it is necessary to start considering the potential implications of IPRs in SysBio.…”

“…This can be achieved through the training of researchers as well as software tool development to support their work flows. The SysBio community should also look towards encouraging data and model sharing through incentives such as credit mechanisms and appropriate mandates on practices from journals . At the same time, it will be important to carefully explore the interplay between recent data transparency initiatives, standardization and IPRs.…”

Promoting microbiology education through the iGEM synthetic biology competition

“…Importantly, a significant driving force during the development of SynBio research has been to ensure good engagement between the scientists, funders of the research and the wider general public. This has led to increased visibility for ethical considerations of SynBio research, particularly in relation to its potential impact on society and the environment (Agapakis 2014;Church, Elowitz, Smolke et al 2014;Minssen, Rutz and van Zimmeren 2015).…”