Hi All
I wanted to let you know about a project I’ve been working on with Linda Kahl, a lawyer with a focus on biotech and open source/sharing/public domain.
The Public Domain Gazette enables biological engineers and life science researchers to discover useful, open technologies to accelerate innovation for improved global health. This includes public domain biotechnologies that are essential to addressing the COVID-19 crisis - making them discoverable and readable for scientists, innovators and manufacturers.
We are bringing together volunteers to seek out useful expired patents (or “born open” technologies) and write about them in scientist-friendly rather than lawyer-friendly language. It can be equal parts fun and frustrating…it is however a great way to get to grips with how to read patents, which are fantastic sources of technical information if nothing else. If you’d like to get involved, read on and complete this form - you can give it a go with one patent or you might find you get hooked.
We’re covering hardware, molecular biology, diagnostic techniques etc so lots to get your teeth into and as ever there are opportunities for great coordinators and communications people as well. Thanks for your time and happy to answer any questions you might have!
Jenny
More about Public Domain Gazette
PDG is an online resource seeded with information from patent offices and born-open initiatives that enables researchers to easily identify technologies that are freely available in the public domain. Descriptions of technologies are enhanced through summaries of how these useful tools can be used to accelerate research. By making these off-patent and born-open technologies easily discoverable and accessible, the PDG will:
- Improve discovery of public domain technologies for life science researchers via an online portal;
- Enhance the value of publicly accessible information through curation and crowdsourced domain expert knowledge of how open technologies can accelerate research and ultimately improve health;
- Facilitate research on the public domain in the life sciences through providing downloadable datasets and enabling user research.
More about volunteering
PDG gives clarity to the legal status of some essential technologies in the life sciences and celebrates the public domain of technologies that belong to everybody.
What does that look like?
- Patent Screening and Curation - identifying technologies for which the application has been abandoned, the patent has expired due to term or non-payment of fees.
- Content Creation - writing descriptions and scientist-readable notes on the technology in addition to collecting the abstract and other key info.
- Uploading to https://publicdomaingazette.org/ - determining featured technologies and composing tweets and announcements for especially key technologies.
See our content pipeline for more ideas and information >>
Register to volunteer here >>