The role of law in ensuring effective technical standards in engineering biology 

Technical standards in engineering biology will help accelerate innovation - but IP and proprietary regimes may impact their effectiveness.

Project duration: October 2022 – May 2026

An assortment of different coloured building blocks are jumbled together in a pile.

Photo by Fran Jacquier on Unsplash.

The challenge

Engineering biology promises to underpin solutions to some of the great challenges of our time. From addressing environmental pollution, to applications across agriculture and medicine, realising these solutions will require collaborative efforts across a global community of practice.  

Reusability and interoperability are key to engineering advances in novel technologies. However, a lack of internationally recognised technical standards in engineering biology risks a patchwork approach, leading to inefficiencies in cost and time.  

There is strong global interest in developing unique technical standards for engineering biology, with a view to building shared understanding and syntax within the domain. This would dramatically speed up processes and facilitate international collaboration.  

Our response

This collaborative project between The University of Queensland’s T. C. Beirne Law School and CSIRO’s Advanced Engineering Biology Future Science Platform examines the role of law in ensuring that any future technical standards operate effectively in the domain of engineering biology. 

The project aims to define what technical standards mean and explain their importance in the context of engineering biology. Several options exist: from open access standards, that are shared by the community, to essential standards protected by IP.  

We will consider how Intellectual Property (IP) law and proprietary regimes would impact the operation of standards, with the overall goal of ensuring that technical standards operate effectively in the field.  

Impact

In exploring the role of law in establishing and implementing technical standards in synthetic biology, this project aims to create insights that foster a legal environment that helps standards operate effectively and enable the access to technology.   

This research will contribute to the ongoing global standardisation efforts in synthetic biology, offering a cross-disciplinary perspective on technical matters from a legal point of view, while also generating insights useful to the synthetic biology community of practice.  

Team

Gonca Cengiz Baris (Project Lead), Brad Sherman (UQ T. C. Beirne Law School), Robert Speight (CSIRO).