User:Myamashita/CAMBIAtest
CAMBIA (Center for the Application of Molecular Biology to International Agriculture) is a not-for-profit plant biotechnology research centre founded in 1992 and located in Canberra, Australia.
CAMBIA works on developing mechanisms for plant improvement, and providing that technology using an open-access or open source model. Biological Innovation for Open Society (BIOS) was initiated by CAMBIAs Executive Director Richard A Jefferson at the World Economic Forum in 2004.
The key goal of CAMBIA is to promote open-source innovation in the wider arena of biotechnology, with a focus on crops. They see open-source as an enabler of innovation, and have developed a suite of technologies, patents and licenses that in their view will give innovators greater freedom to develop and market new biotechnologies.
CAMBIA's views on Intellectual Property
In biotechnology, intellectual property issues often arise, with much of the enabling technology covered under complicated patents. It is CAMBIA's opinion that the current regime creates:
- a requirement for expensive, high-margin applications that fail to address the nutritional and market needs of impoverished societies
- an environment hostile to competition; the high-capital requirements to acquire and negotiate patent rights denies smaller ventures entry into the marketplace, thus concentrating market power into the hands of the wealthiest companies
- self-reinforcing barriers to future improvement, as various parties aggressively hoard their IP in fear of losing out, but end up limiting their freedom to innovate, best known as the Tragedy of the anticommons
As a concrete example of IP, the current industry-standard for plant improvment, injecting genes into crops via Agrobacterium_tumefaciens, carries with it a thicket of patent rights, held by many parties.
In this, CAMBIA developed alternative systems that will allow innovators to "work-around, work-above" the current system.
Technology portfolio:
-Transbacter:
-GUSPlus
-pCAMBIA vectors
BIOS licensing
PatentLens:
See also
References
- Finkel, E. 1999. Australian Centre Develops Tools for Developing World. Science Online [1]
- Goetz, T. 2003. Open Source Everywhere. Wired Magazine 11.11 [2]
- Manning, R. 2004. Super Organics. Wired Magazine 12.05 [3]