Biological Innovation for Open Society

BiOS (Biological Open Source/Biological Innovation for Open Society) is an international initiative to foster innovation and freedom to operate in the biological sciences. BiOS was officially launched on 10 February 2005 by Cambia, an independent, international non-profit organization dedicated to democratizing innovation. Its intention is to initiate new norms and practices for creating tools for biological innovation, using binding covenants to protect and preserve their usefulness, while allowing diverse business models for the application of these tools.

As described by Richard Anthony Jefferson, CEO of Cambia, the Deputy CEO of Cambia, Dr Marie Connett worked extensively with small companies, university offices of technology transfer, attorneys, and multinational corporations to create a platform to share productive and sustainable technology. The parties developed the BiOS Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) and the BiOS license as legal instruments to facilitate these goals.

Traditionally, the term 'open source' describes a paradigm for software development associated with a set of collaborative innovation practices, which ensure access to the end product's source materials - typically, source code. The BiOS Initiative has sought to extend this concept to the biological sciences, and agricultural biotechnology in particular. BiOS is founded on the concept of sharing scientific tools and platforms so that innovation can occur at the 'application layer.' Jefferson observes that, 'Freeing up the tools that make new discoveries possible will spur a new wave of innovation that has real value.' He notes further that, 'Open source is an enormously powerful tool for driving efficiency.'

Through BiOS instruments, licensees cannot appropriate the fundamental kernel of a technology and improvements exclusively for themselves. The base technology remains the property of whichever entity developed it, but improvements can be shared with others that support the development of a protected commons around the technology.

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