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

We are an international group of scholars and legal professionals with a shared research interest in intellectual property in the biosciences and 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.

The network was established in Berlin, 2008 at the Living Properties Workshop, hosted by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. In 2012 a second workshop, Plants, Animals and Ownership, was held at Yale University. Further public events have been held at the University of Leeds, University of York, University of Exeter, University of Montpellier and Griffith University. The network has been hosted and supported by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the Universities of Exeter, Leeds and Oxford, the Australian Centre for Intellectual Property in Agiculture, and from 2023, University of Queensland.

This homepage is intended as a focal point for our activities. It provides details of the network's participants, our resources area provides links to hundreds of freely available papers, books, bibliographies and videos and presentations from IPBio partners, on subjects including agriculture, genetics, biotechnology, plant breeding and stem cells and their historical and contemporary relationship to intellectual property of all types.

We also have an extensive list of links to sites that deal with bioscience, patents, trademarks, copyright and UPOV. Finally, this homepage hosts an email listserv. Please see Contact for details.