88 Proof Synth Bio Blog

A draft legal license for BioBricks was created early in 2008, though as far as I know, it has not been “tested” by industry use of the intellectual property (anyone know?).  Surprisingly, to me, the draft BioBrick license doesn’t contain any liability statements.  The BioBrick license attempts to solidify the “open source”ness of biological components.

Compare the BioBrick license to the original open source software license from MIT, below.

MIT License for Software (circa 1992?)

Copyright (c) [year] [copyright holders]

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

The BioBricks license is simple and mandates only the sharing intent of the license.  Whereas the original MIT and GNU Copyleft licenses contain a significant statement of liability-reduction (which, as far as I know, hasn’t actually been tested in court, though is generally accepted), the BioBricks discussions don’t seem to mention liability at all.

Draft of the BioBricks Legal Scheme (January 2008)

1. You are free to modify, improve, and use all BioBrick parts, in systems with other BioBricks parts or non-BioBrick genetic material.
2. If you release a product, commercially or otherwise, that contains BioBrick parts or was produced using BioBrick parts, then you must make freely available the information about all BioBrick parts used in the product, or in producing the product, both for preexisting BioBrick parts and any new or improved BioBrick parts. You do not need to release information about any non-BioBrick material used in the system.
3. By using BioBrick parts, you agree to not encumber the use of BioBrick parts, individually or in combination, by others.

The BioBrick license seems similar to the Creative Commons Share-Alike license.  The legal scheme is based on the latest legal meetings organized by the BioBrick Foundation:

BioBrick Foundation / Samuelson Clinic Materials from March 2008 UCSF Workshop

1. Legal Options Backgrounder & Draft BBF Legal Scheme: PDF
2. Executive Summary of Findings: PDF
3. Slides from March UCSF Workshop: PPT

Further BioBrick related legal documents are at Open Wet Ware: http://openwetware.org/wiki/The_BioBricks_Foundation:Legal

Open questions as of this writing:

• Has liability been addressed in Biobricks?  (Especially considering the implications of biosafety that surrounds the field.)   By liability, this means a license term which boils down to: “The author of this BioBrick is not responsible if anything bad happens when/if anyone creates/clones/uses/modifies it.”
• Has industry brought BioBrick technology to market which would “test” the BioBrick license?
• What is the roadmap for future license drafts/official versions?