Who are we?

The BiOS Initiative is a non-profit public benefit organisation, incorporated in compliance with the laws of California.  The BiOS Initiative exists to administer and certify Biological Open Source (BiOS) agreements, and provide a forum for public policy initiatives to increase open access to patented and patentable technologies for public benefit.

For information about the BiOS Initiative, and how to make contributions, please contact bios.foundation@bios.net or write to the

BiOS Initiative
708 Gravenstein Highway #268
Sebastopol CA 95472 USA
Fax: +1 503 914 0408

Our goal is to empower diverse innovators and engage the creative spirit of many more people in crafting solutions to their own challenges in food and agriculture, natural resource management, public health or medicine.  We don't want just to initiate productive discussion, but to convert it to practical collaborations with activities such as:

1. Porting the concepts, philosophies, normative behaviours, legal mechanisms and public enthusiasm for Open Source into the vastly more challenging area of patents, and biological research and development. We've already started doing this via a normative license and associated agreements for materials and information transfer, which can be used for any patented or patentable technology, not just ours.
2. Pioneering new, cost-free public access databases, parsing and informatics-rich technologies, the Patent Lens, to render the massive, complex and opaque world of patents and IP into a transparent and stimulating structure for the public good, as originally intended by framers of patent systems.
3. Elucidating and supporting the social and policy initiatives to make these things happen, with constructive engagement in patent law reform, international genetic resources policy, and much more.
4. Describing practical business models that can encourage the development of robust, economically viable small-to-medium enterprise formation to address neglected market opportunities.
5. Making new opportunities to engage the worldwide life sciences R&D community, empowering decentralized innovations and innovators.