Intellectual property regimes are insidious international networks of biopolitical power—ipr gives ownership rights to imperialists, manufacturing consent for its system—rights concerning ownership of life itself are now on the table

Sociologist, Centre of Genomics and Policy and Faculty at the School of Sociological & Anthropological Studies, University of Ottawa, Canada Responsible intellectual property rights? Untangling open-source biotech adherence to intellectual property rights through DIYbio, ()

Why in America, country of democracy par excellence, does no one raise against property in general the complaints that often resound in Europe? Is it necessary to say? In America there are no proletarians. Each person, having an individual possession to defend, recognizes in principle the right of property. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America Since Louis Pasteur was granted a patent, both in U.S. and Europe, on a process for beer fermentation in 1873, the realm of the living has been directly affected by intellectual property (IP) rights [1]. However, the biological organism, recognized as neither machine nor factory, remained unpatentable as an individual entity for over a century.1 In 1980, the conclusion of the Diamond v. Chakrabarty case put an end to said social consensus. It broadened the legal scope of the theory of manufacture, underpinning patent law, so as to allow the inclusion of biological entities [2]:269). In the same year, the promulgation of the Bayh-Dole Act led to a dramatic extension of the scope of IP rights, whose effects TRIPS (trade-related aspects of intellectual property) agreement has globalized [3]. A new age for IP rights on life forms began, reshaping both the biotechnology industry and public research. In the wake of such social, cultural, ethical, and legal transformations, the technoscientific-industrial complex of biotechnologies entered the twentieth century under a sword of Damocles: the “tragedy of the anti-commons” [4]. On the threshold of the purported post-genomic era, eyes turned to the hacker ethos, as formalized in the figure of the distributed/open-innovation paradigm of open-source framework [5], as an antidote to this state of affairs [[6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12]].2 The open-source model emerged as a lifeline allegedly providing transparency and publicity—and thus "morality" [13]—lacking in biotechnology since the neoliberalization of technoscience [14,15]. Gaining institutional shape at the turn of the century, synthetic biology represents the first biotechnoscientific effort to have, from the very beginning, trumpeted loudly and widely its will to model its organization and production after an open-source approach to innovation [10,16]. The inspiration drawn from open-source philosophy, frameworks, and licensing was paramount to the point that its founders considered christening it “open-source biology” [17]:116). It has also fuelled crucial discussions “about the right mix of proprietary control and open access in the field” [18]:34). As the historian of science Luis Campos notes, “[m]atters of IP have been a characteristic and recurring concern of synthetic biology since its very birth” [17]:116). This concern has given rise to a substantial literature drawing on ethnographic, theoretical and documentary approaches to tackle IP issues in synthetic biology from perspectives as varied as sociological [[18], [19], [20], [21]], legal [10,22,23], historical [17], and technological development [24]. I aim to contribute to this body of work with a different approach and analytical focus: qualitative interviews with enthusiasts of Do-It-Yourself biology (DIYbio), a. k.a. bio-hackers. How practitioners of the most active and evolved endeavour of an open-source biology biotechnology, which can be defined as the public arm of synthetic biology, see and think about IP rights system? How do supporters of a hacker-approach to biotechnology conceive the patenting of life forms and the IP regime in general? How biohackers' attachments to open-source interrelate with their conceptions of the IP system more broadly? Grounded in science studies, and drawing principally on scholarship on hacking and biotechnology, this paper probes these questions through a discursive analysis of biohackers' perspectives on IP rights system. After an overview of the DIYbio phenomenon and the methodology adopted in the study, the paper delves into interviewees’ relationship to the IP system. The analysis highlights an unstable stance, oscillating between, and at times hybridising, compliance-disapproval. I propose to grasp this perspective through the concept of responsible IP rights (RIPR). Related to responsible innovation (RI), the latter is particularly committed to (bio)technological innovation through normative ideals of open-source such as inclusiveness, horizontality, participatory practices, and individual autonomy. The conclusion sketches some implications ensuing from this relationship to the IP system. 1. Open-sourcing biotechnology with do-it-yourself bio Founded in 2008 in the neighbourhoods of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), DIYbio may be said to be the most advanced effort to date seeking to translate the hacker approach of software development into biotechnosciences ([13,25]:242).3 This global network of wet-laboratory initiatives aims to “do biology” as hackers have done informatics: in an “open,” collaborative, egalitarian and nonconformist way, accessible to neophytes and to anyone else willing to practice molecular biology and biotechnology in a non-institutional setting [26]. DIYbio positions itself in the genealogical lineage of two major U.S. cultural phenomena: computer hacking, which under the form of open-source [25,27] has spread since the 1990s, and the DIY (Do-it-yourself) tradition of individual empowerment [28,29], also evolving under the Maker logo ([30]; see also [31]).4 Aligned with a bio-making regime ([32]; see also [33]), bio-hackers claim the right to experiment with molecular biology and biotechnologies [34,35]:104–144; [36], as they tinker with equipment, reagents, protocols and microbes in harmony with hacker norms [13]. From geeks to artists, to students, to curious neophytes, and higher education graduates in biotechnosciences more or less weary of academic or corporate world, DIYbio laboratories bring together people with the most heterogeneous tastes, backgrounds and objectives. Like in hacker culture, where technological innovation, exaltation of personal autonomy, and democratic markers become entangled [[37], [38], [39]], DIYbio activities may be undertaken with educational, personal, entertainment, entrepreneurial, expressive, or artistic purposes, in unison with a utilitarian bioeconomy, or as an end in themselves [40]. In the same vein as personal computing, DIYbio strives to convert biotechnologies into “personal biotech” [30]; see also [13] by instilling the ideal of individual autonomy into the practice of biotechnologies [13].5 DIYbio is thus seen as biotech “produced by and for the people” [13]:240; see also [32,41]. Thanks to the development of bio-hacking, artisans, inventors, and tinkerers would be able to appropriate genomics, microorganism cloning, microbiology, and genetic engineering for their own sake. Biotechnologies would then no longer be “received” as they are now (because born according to the standards of institutions and corporations), but designed by everyone for bespoke purposes (such as microbes modified to shine a singular color, or to synthesize a specific nutrient or pharmaceutical, or designed to make art). The DIYbio project is also beholden to its contemporary biotechnoscientific underwriter, synthetic biology. This discipline combines, in its own way, a penchant for bio-manufacturing [42] with a hacker ethos [43].6 Institutionalised in the early 2000s in the cradle of MIT's hacker culture, synthetic biology leaders have strived to find technical, legal, social, and material ways through their wishful “open-source biology” [17]. Notably, open-source openness ideals have been infused into the trademarked socio-genetic object that has given it a unique identity, i.e., BioBricks parts: standardized, functionalized, modularized, and interchangeable DNA sequences made to fit electronic engineering construction principles [20,35]:61, 129). Its promise to transform biology into a tool and a platform for innovation, creation, and design accessible to all [44], inclusively along the lines of a personal biotech (see [21]), lends DIYbio's mission technoscientific plausibility: “As synthetic biologists made bioengineering technology easier and more accessible, [the cofounders of DIYbio] promoted wider adoption among the public” [40]:5). More precisely, DIYbio and synthetic biology are conceived here as entangled and symbiotic objects.7 Genealogically, DIYbio network counts on the support and encouragement of synthetic biologists [35,42]. Socio-culturally, synthetic biology's annual competition of MIT, i.e. iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine competition), produces (and welcomes) a significant number of DIYbio enthusiasts [42,45]:130). Techno-epistemically, they share a desire to deskill bioengineering [42,46,47]. Their common allegiance to the open-source model, as the grounds of their promise for a user-friendly bioengineering accessible to all [20]:177), weaves them together ideologically as well. The hacker ethos of software development was given legal form in 1985, by Richard Stallman, under the figure of free software. However, it was as of 1998, under the less business-off-putting open-source label, that the hacker ethos was acknowledged as a felicitous framework for independent and collaborative work, capacious enough to encompass norms as accessibility, transparency, sharing, co-production, freedom, self-determination, horizontality, egalitarianism, and participation [39,48]. Thanks to its political neutrality and ideological elasticity, open-source may be appropriated by allegiances as diverse as incompatible [38]:185–205), which grants it a place in the productive-system of the open-market economy [48,49]; see also [50]. As individualists who are neither possessive nor selfish, hackers have forged an IP model to their image, one which allows them to innovate by sharing, following a cumulative and collective approach, while retaining individual freedom and autonomy [[37], [38], [39]]. The hacker model of technological production proceeds from a “recursive loop” [51] of re-creation, repurposing, and betterment, “which above all requires access to other people's work” [38]:118). For my purposes here, IP system can be divided into two main figures: copyright, which protects the expressive value of creations, and patent law, which is applied to instrumentally tangible inventions. Patent rights were designed to act as a drive in the invention process8: as a social recognition of, and compensation for the efforts undertaken, they grant patent holders a temporary monopoly right over their inventions, and the corollary “right to sue” [3]:145). For their part, open-source software protection licenses, popularly known as copyleft, are distinctive. Firstly, software is in a legal limbo with IP: source code consists both of “[…] an expressive medium, like writing or speech, and a tool that performs concrete actions” [39]:118). Secondly, in open-source, property is conceived as distribution [52]: IP copyrights are claimed to guarantee holder's distribution rights over software source codes and the necessary freewheeling in the unrestricted and unlimited modifications-to-come, rather than to enforce the holder's protection rights over authorship work. The redistribution of agency, power, and knowledge [39] that emerges from open-source publicity devices, conceived for sharing information and development methods of a digital technology, endows the hacker paradigm with much of a visceral cultural power: “It is about making things public,” emphasizes cultural anthropologist Christopher Kelty [39]:x). Sociologist Jane Calvert has scrutinized the motivations underpinning the adoption of the open-source model by synthetic biology. The drivers appear as manifold: she observes a pragmatic desire to bring bio-innovation to its full potential by opening/distributing innovation agency, often conjoined with a democratic aspiration of claiming a political right to access biotechnologies (2012; see also [44]. DIYbio, by framing biotechnological practice and innovation9 as a matter of public rights and “a mode of political speech” [35]:105–144; also [41], tightly weaves democratic/biotechnological development threads.37 Consonant with the typical duality of open-source, bio-hacking is seen as standing “between activism and entrepreneurship” [53]: while several DIYbio projects evolve towards entrepreneurial ventures, and DIYbio labs incubate and coach start-ups [54], other DIYbio teams nourish market-free intentions [55]. The relationship of DIYbio world to the IP system tends to convey a similar tension as the one driving the adoption of the open-source approach. On the one hand, the extant literature shows that patent rights tend to jeopardize the pursuit of DIYbio projects [56]:163–171 [55,57]:32–35; [58], on the other hand, it pinpoints that the questioning of IP rights within DIYbio communities remains open or should not be taken for granted [25,30,55]:169,172). To be sure, the plurality of actors, the heterogeneity of local communities and projects, the normative ambivalence, and the political ambiguity that surrounds DIYbio [13,59] advise against generalisations. Without losing that of sight, I introduce the concept of RIPR in an attempt to allow us to get beyond the apparent tension and make sense of it, while accounting for the fuzziness of DIYbio stances. 2. Methodological considerations The analysis presented here stems from broader research on bio-hackers’ worldviews. By that I mean the set of ideas, values, norms, and representations on a variety of pivotal topics involving their practices. The focus is thus not on the legal soundness of their perspectives with regard to the legislative apparatus of IP rights, nor in sketching a socio-legal synopsis of what could be an open-source IP in biotechnosciences. Instead, the goal is to expand the understanding of the symbolic pool that loads biohacking practice with meaning, contributing thus to a synthetic understanding of the socio-historical transformation underlying “open-source biotech.” With this in mind, a semi-structured interview guide was designed following a comprehensive-sociological approach [60]. In addition to a question on interviewees’ trajectory, it included six main themes defined on the basis of the research goal, the extant scholarship on bio-hacking and DIYbio literature as well as on issues surrounding the biotechnology field more broadly. The themes were the following: the personal interests in DIYbio (1), the use of the term bio-hacking and the DIYbio claim of hacker lineage (2), ethical implications involving the biotechnoscientific manipulation of life forms (3), contemporary science issues identified by participants and the DIYbio hands-on approach to scientific democratization (4), the relationship between DIYbio and synthetic biology (5), IP and patent systems, the open-source alternative and entrepreneurship in DIYbio (6). The recruitment process sought to account for different views: those of the founders of the Canadian DIYbio initiatives, the members of the DIYbio network with hacker and synthetic biology backgrounds, and the dissonant voices within the communities. In respect to the latter, observations of meetings of two community initiatives were paramount, because these allowed me to identify DIYbio enthusiasts whose positioning or trajectory stood-out, making them potential participants. Of the fifty-nine direct and indirect members of the DIYbio network10 invited to participate in interviews, twenty-six took part, and one subsequently asked to withdraw. The twenty-five interviewees (eight women and seventeen men) are active in art, ICT (information & communication technology), media studies, software development, life and medical sciences.11 All interviews were conducted in person with participants located in Canada, with three exceptions (which resulted from the so-called snowball strategy and gave rise to three interviews with video support with one participant located in the US and two in a South American country). Recorded with permission of the participants, the interviews were conducted between July 2013 and June 2015, and lasted between 1 and 3 h. Most took place in English, a few in French. Interviews were analysed following semantic-structural methods as conceived in the sociology of knowledge by, among others, Paul Sabourin [60].12 The analytical framework was both theoretically grounded and reoriented in the light of empirical data, in a cyclical dynamic [61]. Over the process of segmentation of the excerpts , I gradually identified contents relevant to the research object and defined empirical categories. Consistent with a comprehensive approach, the contents of the empirical categories were first examined on a monographic level, in an attempt to delve into each participant's socio-symbolic universe. Then I engaged in the transversal analysis, focused on the relationships between categories which allowed me to find a cognitive organization of the discourses and obtain a synthetic view of the object (in this case, IP). Despite a concern for identifying commonalities and discrepancies in interviewees’ perspectives according to the various socio-cultural backgrounds mentioned above (art, ICT, media studies, software development, life and medical sciences), with regard to the discussions on IP rights and patenting no identity boundaries between the groups have proved productive within the limits of the research corpus. However, as some socio-cultural backgrounds are only singly-represented, for anonymity protection, I make use here of a threefold identity typology that did prove productive with respect to other dimensions of the research. It consists of biotechnoscience academics (referred to as academics in the following, and composed of fifteen undergraduate and graduate students, university professors, doctoral and postdoctoral researchers), techies (savvy technologists assembling seven computer scientists and ITC people, hackers, communication, and medical science participants, who express an axiological valorisation of the hacker ethos and a need for personal and intensive contact with various technological devices), and artists (three).13 3. A responsible IP In the interviews, the question on traditional IP and the patent system is the one eliciting the most nuanced responses. Frequently preceded by sighs, laughter, or expressions suggesting a certain despondency (such as “this is a complicated question”), the answers are grey-hued: the participants only rarely express firm positions. In contrast, with few exceptions,14 their attachment to the open-source property model is straightforward. The analysis reveals a relationship to the IP regime that is simultaneously resistant to and compliant with IP rights. I use the heuristic concept of RIPR to grasp the contours of the tension underlying their critical adherence to IP regime. RIPR echoes RI. Forged in the wake of nanotechnologies public-investment hype, RI is the current modulation of (expanding) European policy-making for democratic governance of Research & Innovation [62]. RI discourse may be understood as an attempt to frame a more democratic and efficient technoscientific innovation process, from research to distribution, while being responsive to values such as inclusiveness, social acceptability and desirability, “openness,” and sharing [63,64]:420–421). RIPR encompasses these values,15 but it goes beyond the RI claim of innovation “for” and “in” society (shaped by citizenry standards and preferences) [65], fully engaging with innovation by society (shaped by the hand of its citizenry). Said otherwise, biohacker individuals and communities (elsewhere also identified as players in synthetic biology RI [66] sharpen the extant tension between collective-individual responsibility palpable in RI [62].16 Interviewees tend to approve of IP rights over living things as long as these rights allow others to access and do not halt the typical hacker innovation spiral process dependent on free/open reappropriation. This idea comes up eloquently in techie Laetitia's narrative: “[…] I don’t see anything wrong with someone having a patent, but you know, still having it ‘usable.’ […] you can have free licensing, you can say: ‘Yes, I patented this, but here: anyone can use it,’ or ‘yes, I patented this, but you can use it as long as you don’t [make profit] from it’ […]. Cause I think, there is definitely that aspect of it: […] if you create a new species or some sort of patentable item, I don’t think there’s anything wrong17 with wanting to protect your intellectual property from being stolen from Monsanto or some larger company. But I do think that you should remain true to the spirit of openness within the do-it-yourself community because we’re obviously cash-limited. And prohibiting someone from using some types of DNA is just ridiculous! So, I think there is a balance between abusing intellectual property rights and, I think, […] just a responsible level of ownership …” Laetitia transposes a central commitment of the open-source licence-based ownership regimes (the protection of users’ rights to access and appropriate a technical object, discussed in section 1) to patent rights. Accordingly, the application of IP rights over living things can have an “ethical” status provided that it does not prevent public access to a biotechnical property. Indeed, patenting-ensuing legal ban on use of basic bio-entities, such as DNA, is roundly denounced by many interviewees. Laetitia points to BioBricks as one of the solutions addressing such challenges. The BioBricks IP regime is one of a kind. Falling neither into patents nor copyrights,18 BioBricks use is framed by the BioBricks Public Agreement (BPA), a legal contract that merges both “openness” and “closeness”: on the one hand, BPA guarantees BioBricks’ users legal immunity in the appropriation of these genetic sequences (section 1), which may or may not be protected by IP rights, notably patents; on the other hand, it allows patent filing on “new materials and applications” built with these same genetic sequences [67,68]—however flimsy may be such a distinction.19 In fact, because BPA constructs the “creative users-innovators” as “the most important subject [individual or collective] to empower” [21]:199), it frames their autonomy as deserving full protection. Furthermore, the synthetic biologists fostering BioBricks regime state: “We're not against patents per se” [67,68]: their concern is rather to instil “diversity” into the IP and innovation ecosystem [20]. Likewise, for some participants, the problems generated by the IP regime are not inherent to the “closed” ownership modality (which keeps data and tools relating to the reproduction and appropriation of innovations secret or protected ); instead, they are seen as pertaining to the lack of balance between closed and open ownership modalities that puts the productive system under the yoke of the former. Such is techie Tomas' vision, for whom a hybrid regime, where closed and open IP regimes co-exist, “clearly is a good spectrum."20 Academic Colbert elaborates on this perspective. For him, a balance is to be found between innovation “stimulation” and “rewarding,” between ensuring the non-enclosure of “essential parts” and the commercial protection of final products: “[ …] I think, it’s always this balance between stimulating innovation and rewarding innovation. But, yeah, I think it's good that certain things, especially the essential parts should be always open access […]. But then, specific uses of these, if somebody combines seven genes with certain regulatory elements and creates a new product that serves a certain purpose, I think that should be protectable because probably it has cost a lot of money, somebody had to invest time on that, and these also probably provide some kind of benefit to society. So I think it's understandable that these should be protectable. But there's always this balance: protecting final products but never protect the tools to create these final products." In its “effort to prevent overly broad patenting of parts” [21]:190), which could culminate in patent thickets [17]:137), the normative-legal arrangement set up by Biobricks regime actually conveys how many interviewees tend to frame the scope of IP rights over life-forms: patenting of final biotechnological devices is acceptable, but the enabling resources and tools required for bio-innovation, such as DNA sequences, genes and regulatory networks, must remain “accessible to all” in order not to disrupt the bio-innovation spiral. RIPR, I argue, shall conform to such norms. Each of the following subsections unfolds the rationale underpinning participants’ peculiar and syncretic conception of IP rights, grasped through the lens of RIPR. The first two explore why, instead of an outright rejection, interviewees express a sympathetic attachment to the IP system, and the latter, why RIPR implies restraint on the scope of some IP rights. 3.1. Patent rights as a dysfunctional imperative Interviewees are not full-throated supporters of the traditional IP rights system, or of the patent system in particular. Yet, they remain on the side of reform. This is due, notably, to the pivotal role they ascribe such rights in innovation regime. The qualifier responsible in RIPR aims at accounting for such ambivalence. It is not uncommon for participants to preface their responses to the question of IP and patent systems with formulas that at first glance suggest an absolute refusal of the patent production system, such as “I hate the patent system,” or “in principle, I am against patenting.” However, little by little, they come to admit the legitimacy of patents' original raison d’être, or at the very least to narrow their initial criticism to particular practices, such as patent trolls.21 Melding together critique and necessity, the case of academic Taiyp stands out: “Huh … ! I hate patents. They are necessary, but they are also absolutely absurd. They’re absurd because a lot of people, [the] ‘patent trolls,’ [they simply write a theoretical document with no experimental research being made].” The idea that the issues with the patent system rest in the way it is applied is virtually unanimous among the participants. Corrupted with regard to its original mission to feed invention processes, the patent system has become dysfunctional, explains techie Harry: “[…] the patent system is really broken in high-tech, like fundamentally broken, really fucked up. […] it’s being used in an anti-competitively way, in a way totally counter to the original idea of a patent, [that is] to reward inventors for doing the hard work of inventing […]. [Now,] basically, huge hipping piles of money, instead of being spent on more innovation—which is what the patent system is supposed to be doing—, is spent on lawyers and ridiculous lawsuits, [fines, penalties, trade injunctions].” At the core of the dispute between the biohackers interviewed and IP rights rests what can be called a perverted use of the latter: “So I think it's a good idea, but a very bad implementation what we have on patents [rights now],” sums up academic Mateo. IP regime is decried to the extent that it allows acknowledged shady practices—e.g., patent trolls, patent thickets [69], granting protection rights for “trivial changes,"22—in a situation of financial and temporal inequity between oligopolies and small players (see [7]:266–267).23 There tends to be a consensus on the need to reform the patent and IP systems, but there is no question of abandoning them as such, including when the subject matter is biological.24 The issue of bio-patenting also brings interviewees to side with grey discursive areas.25 Artist Theodora's positioning illustrates the common hesitation and reluctance among participants to take a strong stand on the subject as ethical stances get diluted by pragmatic considerations. Theodora declares from the outset to be against the patenting of organisms, while conceding that the troublesome protection granted by the patent system may be required for the survival of small innovators. However, given that the system typically works in reverse, she claims that it must be modified: “That’s a complicated issue [the patent system and IP] … That’s quite complicated … [long pause] I mean, I’m definitely not for patenting organisms […], but I’m also not, I mean … the problem with patenting is not to protect somebody’s right, is to protect somebody’s business. So although I do realize that patenting some stuff may protect a small business from the big business, most of times is the other way around. I think it should be modified in some way.” Teodora's case illustrates another tendency among the interviewees: to portray bio-innovators as hostages of a system they must call upon for the sake of protecting themselves. The idea of bio-innovators taking part in the patent system under constraint is grounded on a common belief that “protection” of inventions against the cornering of bio-innovations by competitors is non-negotiable in the market. In the words of the academic Birame: “I realized if you can't patent something […] someone can just copy you and take it from you.” For techie Laetitia, if the innovator wants to ensure that the access to her/his innovation remains “open,” the claiming of IP rights is also required as a way of protecting inventions against the exercise of possessive ownership regimes: “[…] if you don’t patent ever [your invention], or have any kind of copyright over it [because you want to make it open], someone else can do it [patenting] and make it close.” Known as “self-defence” patenting, this strategy is practiced and to some extent encouraged in the open-source milieu [58]:205–206). Free software hackers also faced this cul-de-sac, having had to resign themselves to “the absolutely essential nature of the license—without it, software can be made proprietary again” [70]. This explains the open-source paradoxical modus operandi in its creation of a pool of “common goods”: it can only build a “commons” by legally enforcing IP rights; its licenses disrupt IP rights without knowing how to do without them.26 The feeling of having to take part in the patent system unwillingly is even more evident in the accounts of two academics well advanced in their careers. Senia is one of the few participants, of the three groups, to declare herself unconditionally against the patent system.27 Yet, should a researcher want her/his discoveries to end up as a pharmaco-innovation, she explains, there exists no choice but to claim IP rights: “In general, I am absolutely against [patents and IP]. […] I agree with [the inventor of the polio vaccine, who refused to patent it saying that it belongs to everyone].28 [However,] if you create drugs [and] you want the drug to be available to everyone, [you must have IP rights] […] because only the big pharmaceutical companies are able to do all required tests to get the drug approved, [and the big companies only buy the drug when IP has been claimed]."29 As we see, even those participants arguing against the patent system remain trapped in its infrastructural and symbolic fabrics. To be sure, participants' despair encompasses to some extent artist Theodora's despondency when she envisions the future of innovation in DIYbio: “I mean, we're living in a capitalist system, so …” The reasons for the fatalism are beyond the scope of this analysis; more intriguing here is the weight, or burden, of the current biotech political-economy on DIYbio enthusiasts, so much so it seems to narrow their imagination of a bio-innovation regime unleashed from IP rights supra/infrastructure. That being said, it is also telling that participants barely elaborate criticism on the principles of the patenting production system (such as the competition model [71]).30 As the next section shows, their priorities appear to lie elsewhere. 3.2. For Innovation's sake If moderation may qualify most interviewees' stance on patents, this is not to say that this family of rights does not run counter to the skein of values of some of them. Curiously though, even in those cases, the participants come to express an indulgent attitude towards patenting. I suggest that in the DIYbio world, an even more fundamental commitment than an individual's ethical (in)disposition towards patenting exists, namely, innovation. In the name of innovation, interviewees are willing to make concessions with respect to possessive IP rights. This chief-component of RIPR discourse is observed in a crystalline way especially among techies. Techie Vania spoke eloquently in this regard at various times. Here she argues that to the extent that lives are at stake, the field of biology is unique in the high-tech innovation regime: “The potential for do-it-yourself bio […] is so huge and could mean so much to humanity and the other species on the planet that […] … I can’t even think of a strong enough word. I think it’s horribly, horribly unethical to try to profit from things that we should all have access to [such as life-saving drugs]. […] anything that I do, in technology, in biology, I open-source. Because I want everyone to have access to it.” Later, a politico-normative softening takes place: “[…] the fact that it [the patent system] is not something that I enjoy and value doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be valued, you know […]. I have my personal preference, which is that I’d like to see everyone to give stuff away for free, but I know that’s not reasonable [laughs]. […] because I know people who are using the DIYbio tools to build a company. And I think that’s great, that’s awesome! Just not […] for me, but it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do it.” Vania's case is telling. It indicates that even biohackers most-convinced about the ethical deficit of IP rights over biotechnological products can accommodate the principles, norms, and effects of the system. Even though Vania rejects the private appropriation of innovations, particularly biotechnological, her ethical position remains confined to a matter of personal disposition. As such, it is unable to reach the political-claim threshold necessary to ground a collective contest of IP rights over living forms. On the contrary, Vania emphasizes that even though she holds this system in low esteem, she respects its use among her peers.31 I see a twofold imbricated-spring at play here. The first relates to the conception of innovation as a sovereign good—the sacralisation of invention and innovation activities as a value and as a right [72]:209). Biohackers’ autonomy in biotechnological practice can be said to be proportional to their capacity to innovate32: from gaining independence from commercial products and the academic system, to obtaining political support from governments and financial support from investors and communities, they must leverage their artistic, creative, inventive and entrepreneurial potential. The development of (bio)innovations appears to produce such a fascination effect that it casts a shadow on personal ethical, moral, and ideological considerations. This trend can be observed also unfolding in well-known DIYbio projects such as Real Vegan Cheese, which, while self-declared as an “anti-Monsanto” avatar, opens itself up to contributions from large bio-corporations [74]:166). The second amounts to the normative individualism, in the sense of self-determination and subjective autonomy, that infuses hacker culture [37,38,75]; see also [31]:61, 127–172). By commanding each subject to stand up for the right of others to embrace their rights to patenting, it makes unlikely the collective construction of a utopian project that might socially, politically and economically call into question IP rights over bio-entities. It encompasses communication scholar Alessandro Delfanti's claim that the animosity the Bayh-Dole Act sparks in some DIYbio enthusiasts is due to its interference with individual rights, not to its role in knowledge commodification or academic capitalism (2013:125). As we see, biohackers may consent to IP system by proxy, because even when they happen to personally disapprove of it, the prominence of individualistic liberal philosophy entails respect for the right of others to make use of their legal rights to patenting. Here it is relevant to recall that the issues raised by the IP regime reach into the ideas of individual rights and property, and in this sense, Mario Biagioli argues, addressing the contemporary challenges raised by this system calls less for the implementation of new ad hoc policies than for confronting the historical transformation of what used to be a privilege into a new “right” ([76]:36). Yet, the path taken by DIYbio phenomenon appears to be at odds with such an approach. Signs of this individualistic philosophy also surface expressively in techie Laetitia's discourse (herself a computer hacker). Below she exposes the dissonant stances on patent rights extant within the open-source community as a matter of personal preferences. Her own positioning with regard to the patent system and her argumentative starting point contrasts with Vania's, but the arrival point is an analogous conciliatory posture: “Hmm, that’s really a tough question [the patent system] … […] I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically wrong with patents. Which is not something that a lot of people in the open-source community say, [there is a bit of a divide in the community about patents, most of us say ‘we don’t want it, at all’]. […] of course we want to keep things as open as possible, but there’s still the looming fear of being taken advantage of by larger companies […]. Some people don’t mind [being taken advantage of]. So that’s cool [and it] is totally acceptable too […].” The paramountcy of the ideal of individual self-determination and the reformism, rather than a revolutionary spirit [39]:65), observed in hackers, surfaces in DIYbio adepts political restraint. As with computer hackers, interviewees appear to be more inclined to an individualistic stance, based on normative and prescriptive constraint, than to a clear political positioning on eminently ideological, axiological, political and disruptive issues such as IP on living. Even teams behind DIYbio projects described as “antibiocapitalist” are willing to limit their action to the (bio)technique realm, “[avoiding] directly or systematically confronting the established political institutions of biocapital” [55]:88). More precisely, the commitment to the defence of personal stances on IP rights resonates with the “political agnosticism” of hacker culture [38]:187–190). According to cultural anthropologist Gabriella Coleman, the typical “political denial” observed in hacker culture actually functions as a bulwark against political “conflict”: pragmatic, hackers focus their energies on the common project that is of primary importance to them. Typically, this is the development of high-quality open software (2013:185–200). Something similar appears to be at play in the North American biohacking world, where the equation, for one of the co-founders of DIYbio, is rather simple: “The more actors you have, the more innovation can occur” (Mac Cowell quoted in [36]:25). Said otherwise, a relativistic moral-philosophy conjures the promised-land of DIYbio where biotechnologies become new “personal technologies” (section 1). In a thought experiment of sorts, techie Humbert depicts how such innovation-driven pragmatism, if pushed to its limits, may turn the normative issues involved in IP over bio-entities into a bookkeeper-expertise issue: “The only real excuse and justification for patents is if they promote innovation. That is the only reason for monopoly [of products like pharmaceuticals]. And so then, that becomes a practical question [about patents], of ‘do they or don’t they [promote innovation]?‘, or rather, to ‘what extent do they increase it, and to what extent do they slow innovation down?’” Such a radical commitment to bio-innovation may be a biohackers' strength or Achilles heel, depending on the point of view. One way or another, somewhat paradoxically (considering that the program of “distributed biotech” is conditioned by the public release of biotechnological resources and the exchange and transparency of materials and data), DIYbio is unlikely to epitomize a resurrection of an “anti-patent campaigns” movement as witnessed in the past.33 It is believed that open-source biotech can lead to the disruption or circumventing of IP monopolies [7]:167; [25]:117–133; [77], and theoretically, we may observe a logical and “[…] a strong tension between the open nature of biohacking and the closed nature of the formal IP system” [57]:32); however, this study suggests that at play is not so much a tension as a critical adherence. The “current balance of power” in industrial and academic institutions [13] is at issue for them. For many biohackers’, the contention over IP regime involves the fact that this ownership right is monopolized by a few players, rather than its fundamentals. Their battle horse is to spread the access to IP rights and their realm. 3.3. Making is owning: expanding ownership modalities The use that open-source licenses make of property rights definitely breaks with the classic representation of a private property reserved for the exclusive use of the property rights holder (section 1). Because they demonstrate that a private intellectual good can be made freely available to others to be reproduced, modified, reinvented and shared, the notion of property may appear to lose its meaning somewhat. Yet, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, this study indicates that the open-source approach inspires, on the contrary, a pronounced feeling of possession. For this to happen, innovators must be granted unrestricted freedom to act, so as to mold the (bio)technology to their normative designs. This circles us back to open-source property regime as the ultimate enabler for distributed innovation. This section expands on the latter by delving into another token of biohackers’ overwhelming commitment to innovation. While above we explored why participants often nurture ties to IP system principles, here we peruse why RIPR also imply a certain restraint on IP rights. This is so, especially, when core resources for bio-innovation are at stake. Techies Tomas' and academic Colbert's cases are telling in this regard. On the one hand, both defend a better “balance” between possessive and open-source IP rights (section 3). On the other hand, their allegiance to open-source becomes full-throated when the cornering of enabling bio-resources through patent rights is at stake. Tomas says: “[Despite my hesitancy regarding open source, given insufficient creators' rewarding,] I’d like to see a lot more open source in biology, that’s for sure. And it’s very dangerous the way that it’s going right now. There are some very basic things being patented and policed. To the point where, basically, from what I can tell, [it would now be virtually] impossible to do anything without breaking some kind of law, nominally, and that is bad news. So I think that’s disgusting, and I think it has no place there, and it should be as open as possible.” While Colbert declares: “I think basic libraries, so meaning, basic genetic parts [and genetic sequences] should be available for everybody […]. I would be very strong on that. And then, I think, also, all the components of the genomes, like, specific genes and specific regulatory elements, I'm also very convinced that these should be open access 100%.” This unequivocal support of open-source regime as a way to ensure the free circulation of foundational resources can be understood in light of the uncommon relationship that hackers nourish towards the idea of technological control and appropriation [37, 75]. Tomas addresses this topic explicitly at different times during the interview. Below, he defines the term hacking. He explains that within this culture, true ownership consists of an emergent feature arising through the practices of subverting, repurposing and designing a technical object: “[Hacking] is about taking things out of the shrink wrap, subverting the purpose and controlling them in a way that […] makes you truly own them […].34 Real ownership. It’s not something that’s being given to you on its own terms, [a tool that you bought which you must accept as is]. It becomes something that is a tool to do what you would like it to do […].” Employing different words to formulate this idea, techie Humbert arrives at a similar conclusion: hacking allows to “make something yours.” “[…] the whole GPL thing [the free-software licensing] [was about pushing] back against patenting, against softwares, and service models, and all of these things [that companies use to lock data down, to prevent people from being able to control the devices that they own]. To prevent you from being able to see what is happening in your software and hack it, and change it, and make it yours.” The valuing of technology-personalisation practices is at the core of hacker and maker/DIY cultures' axiology. Within movements promoting autonomous/distributed manufacturing, a paramount requisite is the individual capacity to exercise full power over the technology in order to best meet one's needs and creative urges [78]. Either acting as prosumer, innovator or entrepreneur [79]:19), creativeness and expressiveness remain prominent values. In The Maker Movement Manifesto, one reads that self-made artifacts amount to self-materialization: “There is something unique about making physical things. These things are like little pieces of us and seem to embody portions of our souls” [80]:11). In computer hacking, more particularly, the stake may be less substantial, but no less engaging subjectively. Hackers entangle their normative ideal of self-determination to the creative practices of software improvement and repurposing [39]:116; see also [75], which are framed as a subjective and expressive work (a feature spanning hacker studies since the seminal work by Steven Levy). In addition, as “amateur legal thinkers and tinkerers,” paraphrasing Gabriella Coleman, they have put together a “corpus of legal theory” where they assert the expressive value of their practices and ascribe to source code writing the legal and philosophical stature of a free speech right (2013:159–202). Under the aegis of free speech doctrine, the practices of software coding/improving/subversion are reframed as speech. The claimed software-speech-freedom bond (which thrives not without epistemological, political, and ethical pitfalls) entails that the freedom to share/circulate/modify source codes must prevail over any constraining law, such as restrictive IP rights [38]. Returning to bio-hacking, IP interference in the free circulation of enabling biotechnological resources also appears to engage more than “the normative ideal of the freedom to create” [21]:199, also [18]:47). Self-determination and self-fashioning may be at stake. In Tomas’ eyes, the peculiar hacker relationship to property, where the subversion and repurposing of a technical object enacts a “real ownership,” also applies to bio-objects. His view rests on the premise of the lack of differentiation between living and non-living matter that grounds both the patent law since the Diamond v. Chakrabarty case and the techno-epistemic project of synthetic biology [42]:88). For him, biological artifacts also call for being modified, re-appropriated and, above all, “truly possessed” like any other technology: “I don’t see the difference between a cell phone and a tree in terms of whether it’s legitimate technology or not. I think that everything which we modify to try to produce an effect becomes technology […]. And so, [I] understand biology as something that has come out of this magical, almost religious realm of things that just are, and [now is] into this realm of things which can be manipulated, and built, and improved upon, and truly owned by societies and people. And ownership is a strange term there. But ownership to me is very similar to Richard Stallman’s idea of free software […]. It’s the idea that if you have something, you should understand how it works and be able to modify it yourself. And biology is particularly promising there.” Ultimately Tomas unveils what seems to be a rather overlooked dimension of hacking practice. If personalizing a technology generates a sense of possession over it, to the extent that hacking consists of a hands-on exploration of the plasticity of technical objects in order to forge them after one's own needs, tastes and desires, hacking itself can be defined as a practice of manufacturing subjective property. Indeed, the hacker premise of the virtually bottomless perfectibility of technical systems calls for a virtually endless circle of autonomous individual (re)appropriation and recreation of technical objects in accordance with one's desires and needs [37,75,81]. For hackers, Gabriella Coleman clarifies, “freedom is understood foremost to be about personal control and autonomous production” (2013:164). A quest of self-determination in technological innovation, hacking may be said to exist to the extent that a person is free to make a technical object conform to their idiosyncratic velleities, needs, norms, and interests; through this appropriation process emerges a sense of symbolic, qualitative possession over the given object. The open-source framework paves the way to this identity relationship to property. It grants access to the range of resources that creators/contributors/innovators require to unleash their freedom in the (re)shaping of (bio)technologies. Scholarship on synthetic biology inventories the plethora of techno-epistemic avatars that swarm from the verb making: “knowing through making” [82]:54), “making is knowing, and knowing is making” [83]:292), “making to know, knowing to make” [84]:637), “knowing as making, making as knowing” [85]. In light of this study, I suggest that in the “age of making” [78], manufacturing is not just an epistemic vehicle, but also a proprietary vehicle: making is owning, and owning is making. The only echo of this issue in studies on DIYbio and the maker/DIY movement, to my knowledge, presents bio-hacking activities on personal bio-manufacturing as an emancipatory approach for the appropriation of biology: “[Biology hacking, that is, transforming it into a low-cost and creative technical practice] is done by producing a way of relating to biology and technology that is not delegated but ‘owned’ (not necessarily in a proprietary sense, but in the sense of ‘appropriated’). As Hackteria35 [says], ‘If you can’t build your Lab you don’t own the Lab’” [86]:7). To dismiss swiftly any question involving the notion of ownership and property in such “appropriation” as a vector for empowerment appears to me as to miss substantial features of the DIYbio phenomenon and its kindred movements. With respect to hacking, Gabriella Coleman suggests that by hitching their creations to the speech freedom doctrine, hackers also distance themselves from notions of property (2013:10). Yet, etymologically at least, the practices of individual appropriation and shaping of technologies to the image of a person's wills manifest the primary meaning of the noun property: a borrowing from the French propriété, whose radical, propre, from the Latin proprius, counts among its meanings “what belongs in its own.” In light of its root, “property” refers in the first instance to what is “proper” and “exclusive” to oneself and “to her/him alone,” as in “a proper identity” (“ownership” inheriting the meaning of proper from the Germanic eigen).36 The legal aspect of ownership as “right of possession” then becomes a derivative. What does that tell us? Unlike the sheer enforceable legal right to exclusivity in the use of a given property, the open-source approach embraces and facilitates the attainment of a symbolic and qualitative dimension to ownership. Thanks to open-source, one may aspire to mold a technical object to embed one's norms/needs/desires, lending it “distinctive attributes” that make it a novel artifact “belonging in its own” to a person. Such symbolic relationship to property, as the fruit and reflection of one's idiosyncratic norms, is irreducible to any legal right. Only an ownership paradigm rooted in the promotion of freedom and autonomy in self-manufacturing/-innovation, as is open-source, makes possible, as Tomas puts it, to “truly own” a (bio)technology. 4. Conclusion: towards a dual-use system In his study of the Biobricks regime, Stephen Hilgartner identifies the typical features of an IP-minimalist strategy for boosting innovation (i.e. “fewer and weaker rights”); a “relatively conservative approach” (2012:203–205) to open-biotech after all, he concludes. Contrastingly, Hilgartner shifts expectation to new open-source “collective subjects for shaping the direction of innovation […] in ways that distribute configuration power in new and more inclusive ways” [21]:205; see also [57]. While fitting the description of such collective, the portrait of DIYbio emerging from my fieldwork also appears as more conservative than it may be expected. Whether through technological pragmatism, ideological sympathy, or socio-political fatalism—biohackers’ skein of values is definitely far from monolithic—this study indicates that a relationship of complicity exists between the IP regime and the DIYbio community. Even among the minority of the interviewees positioning themselves ethically and ideologically opposed to the principle of IP on biological entities, some come to manifest moderation with regard to practices at odds with their values. The purpose of the concept of RIPR is intended to grasp the underlying axiological, ideological, and technical complexity of DIYbio critical adherence to the IP regime. RIPR draws our attention to a combination of receptiveness to the enforcement of IP rights either when desired (individual choices) or needed (as techno-legal devices necessary to enforce market protection against competition, in particular, vis-à-vis the major players), with the objection to the enforcement of IP rights when these imperil access to core biotechnological resources. Clearly, substantial questions remain. Not least, the challenging distinction between parts and products. The concept of RIPR (and hence, this paper) therefore does not pretend to exhaust the issue; quite the contrary, it is a call for further inquiry into open-source biotech practitioners’ representations, valences and ideas of the IP system at large. Bitter critics of the traditional IP system, participants speak against the degradation in the use of IP rights as an engine of innovation. By almost unanimously arguing that the problems involving IP are in fact a matter of degrees and of “context” of its misuses, interviewees’ discourses, and the deriving RIPR concept, presuppose that IP rights on life are neutral, or dual-use. I refer here analogically to the notion of technological duality, where technological outcomes are framed as emanations from the (phenomenological) intentionality driving their uses [87]; consequently, it is up to societies to implement sound policies to manage potential misuses while leveraging the “good uses” [88]. Similarly, RIPR is built on an idealization of a “good use” of the IP system: one which commits to the protection of both the innovation process and the public hands-on participation in it. The instillation of duality into IP regime raises significant issues. Two main points are worth mentioning. The first is that in doing so, biohackers contribute to the naturalization of the socio-cultural cornerstones of the current patent system (such as its extension to life forms), and of the ideology to which it serves as a political tool (such as the legal right to monopoly as an instrument of power gain in the market (see [89]. The second is related to RIPR′ responsiveness to the open-source innovation regime. The interviews brought to the fore a sui generis paradox in the open-source approach to innovation. On the one hand, its distributed innovation paradigm represents for most an “ideal” IP regime: deemed ethical and socially desirable because it ensures transparency and the sharing of data involving the development of a (bio)technological good, the free individual disposition, and the non-obstruction of the innovation process. On the other hand, by intertwining personal autonomy, creative freedom and (bio)technological appropriation/innovation, the same approach tends to act as a driver for the sense of property over living things. Tailored to innovator's idiosyncrasies, life forms can finally belong to someone “properly” in open-source biology. The ultimate expression of ownership feeling—possession—over a (bio-)artifact encompasses a type of ownership that is disproportionate to any legal right to property. This identification-based ownership appears to be overlooked in studies on DIYbio (and hacker culture), and should be explored in its socio-cultural and epistemological roots, and symbolic and ethical implications. That being said, it might be that DIYbio's impact turns out to be foremost cultural—alike to its alter-ego, synthetic biology, whose effects may lie more in the construction of a new ethos of the researcher [90]:47 [91]:36), than in the manufacture and commercialisation of bio-artifacts. Should DIYbio remain confined to some ad infinitum variations of basic biotechnological techniques re-appropriated in loop for recreational purposes—such as the conversion of microbes into pictorial tools—, biohackers might still be well on the verge of dismantling one of the most biting criticisms of genetic engineering, given its socio-political relevance: the granting of IP rights over life forms [92,93,94]. The well-known Irish biohacker, Cathal Garvey, claims it explicitly with some words now familiar to us: “In my experience, hatred of GMO crops more often than not begins to crumble when the possibility of true ownership emerges” (quoted in [91]:35). Regardless of the legal and techno-practical uncertainties surrounding DIYbio future and projects, in the light of the interviews, one can expect our biological horizon to mirror our present, increasingly moving away from Linnaean nomenclature and closer to IP logos [95]:161–162), be they industrial or individual. If the stoic reductionism of molecular biology and its biotechnological offspring would doom technical-life-forms to commodification and appropriation ([19]; see also [72]:224), should societies content themselves to “[free] biology from possessive ownership”? [42]:96) To the extent that DIYbio is rooted in a bio-making regime in tune with synthetic biology's bioeconomic project of transforming “useless materials in very added-valued materials” (to use the words of one of the interviewees), these IP issues remain most pressing. Being responsive to them requires us to turn our eyes and bend our ears to subjectivities and societies from elsewhere, unlike the essentially Canadian corpus of this study. Societies where relations woven with life and property can afford, maybe, other biotechnological futures. Yet, as non-Western countries may unveil a less shining face of the emancipatory and progressive values attached in the West to notions of open access and public domain ([96]:4–5, 20–21), the IP maze is likely to gain even more subtleties. Ethics approval The project was approved by the ethics review board of the University of Montreal. Declaration of competing interest None.