Intellectual Property and the Commons in Synthetic Biology: Strategies to Facilitate an Emerging Technology

Summary form only given. Synthetic biology is an emerging discipline that uses engineering principles to design and assemble biological components. Potential applications span medicine, energy, and other fields. But there is evidence that ambiguous intellectual property rights claims create an "anti-commons" problem in which legal concerns deter innovation and challenge some synthetic biologists' fervent open-source ethos. This paper discusses intellectual property rights (IPR) conflicts in basic research and in commercialization.