Welcome to the Intellectual Property in the Biosciences (IPBio) Network homepage.

We are an international group of scholars with a shared research interest in the History of Intellectual Property in the Biosciences and its relevance to current policy. The network's participants hail from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds including law, philosophy, history, sociology and science studies. We seek to encourage an interdisciplinary and intersectoral conversation on the past, present and future of IP in the biosciences.

This homepage is intended as a focal point for our activities. It provides contact details for the network's participants, news of activities and events in which network members are involved and a news archive. Our resources area provides links to hundreds of freely available papers, books, bibliographies and videos and presentations from IPBio partners, on subjects including genetics, biotechnology, plant breeding and stem cells and their historical and contemporary relationship to intellectual property of all stripes. We also have an extensive list of links to sites that deal with bioscience, patents, trademarks, copyright and UPOV. Finally, this homepage hosts a blog (with an inaugural post by project member Graham Dutfield, Are life forms (still) inherently unpatentable?) and a forum.

Microscope image of plant vascular bundles under differential stain, B. Charnley 1999.