The patent informatics and analysis component of the BIOS initiative aims to assist both professionals and non-professionals to understand and navigate the intellectual property landscape within the life sciences. The patent system was created to encourage public disclosure of inventions and clear definition of each invention being protected, so that when the patent monopoly is not in force. for example when it has expired or where it was not granted, the invention may be used for further innovation.
The resource was initially developed by CAMBIA, as the CAMBIA IP Resource (formerly www.cambiaIP.org). The Intellectual Property (IP) resource currently consists of a fully text-searchable patents database which has recently been greatly expanded to contain 1,500,000 life science patents from the US, Australian and European-based databases, and they are working to include others.
The CAMBIA-BIOS patent search resource now includes INPADOC patent family information provided by the national patent offices of over 70 countries, as well as status information provided by many of these countries.
