It is fair to assume that the process of standardization may have a significant impact on the development and adoption of SB. Within SB different standardization efforts have been made, but none has assumed a dominance or authority in the area. Standardization efforts within SB may differ within various technical areas, and also the basic processes of standard creation can be divided into various categories. The different technical areas and processes for standardization differ in their speed, handling of interests and ability to dodge possible IPR concerns.
Out of this notion arise i.a. the following questions: How comparable is engineering in SB to more traditional fields of engineering?; What type of standards have emerged and what bearing have IPRs on these?; and, How applicable are the approaches adopted by the standards-setting organizations in the information and communication technology (ICT) to biological standards? These and further legal issues related to IP, regulation, standardization, competition law & open innovation require a careful consideration of new user-generated models and solutions.
Before this background this paper seeks to describe IP and standardization aspects of SB in order to discuss them in the context of the “open innovation” discourse. We concentrate on describing the technology and identifying areas of particular relevance. Ultimately we also sketch out open questions and potential solutions requiring further research. However, due to the limitation of this paper we do not aim to create thorough theories or to propose solutions in more detail.
To achieve this modest goal, section 1 commences with a brief introduction to the fascinating science of SB and a description of recent technological advances and applications. This will lead us to section 2, in which we will address standard setting efforts in SB and the relevance of various IPRs for specific SB standards. This provides the basis for section 3, in which we debate problematic issues and summarize our conclusions.