Openness in Intellectual Property Strategies of Synthetic Biology Start-ups

Abstract

The concept of Intellectual Property (IP) strategies has a growing importance for technology-based firms in recent years, which includes open IP strategies such as permissive licensing making IP free for others to use or choosing not to protect IP at all. At the same time, the question of how IP should be used as an asset to promote innovation and protect the economic return for firms has been debated across various emerging industries. This study aims to understand the current IP strategies of synthetic biology start-ups and their willingness to open up IP in the future. A conceptual framework of ranking different IP strategies and the concept of Willingness to Open are first proposed. Then, qualitative data is collected from eight synthetic biology case studies in the UK. The companies’ IP strategies are divided into in-bound and outbound, and ranked within the conceptual framework. The motivations and impacts of these IP strategies are analysed and discussed. Finally, each company’s willingness to open up their IP in the future is ranked from high to low, alongside their reasonings. These analyses have proven the value of this exploratory work, however more studies are required to clarify the current findings and broaden the research.