The work of Patent Lens is recognised by innovative organisations around the world, among them by the founder MySQL, Monty Videnius:

Richard A. Jefferson PhD

CEO, CAMBIA, Patent Lens

Born in California, Richard obtained a PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of Colorado, followed by an NIH fellowship in Cambridge where he conducted the world's first field release of a transgenic food crop, and created and distributed what is now amongst the most widely cited and licensed plant biotechnologies. 

After working with the FAO of the United Nations as Senior Molecular Biologist he founded CAMBIA, in Canberra in 1991. CAMBIA is an independent, international non-profit institute which creates new technologies, tools and paradigms to bring efficiency and equity to life-sciences enabled innovation.

The CAMBIA BiOS Initiative (www.bios.net) - the biological open source movement - is an integrated response to increasing science and technology complexity, patent thickets and innovation system inefficiencies.  The BiOS Initiative created the first patent-based commons mechanism for science-enabled innovation, and has been the trend-setter in new thinking about patents and public good. As part of this work, CAMBIA created the Patent Lens, (www.patentlens.net), now the pre-eminent independent public, global open access resource for increasing patent transparency.

Richard has worked and taught extensively in the developing world, supporting the Rockefeller Foundation's biotechnology network for over ten years, and has been a consultant for many UN Agencies. He has been profiled in media including The Economist, Newsweek, Nature Biotechnology and Red Herring.  CAMBIA's work has recently featured in cover editorials in most major life sciences journals.

n 2003 he was named by Scientific American to the List of the World's 50 most influential technologists, cited as the World Research Leader for 2003 for Economic Development.  Richard is an Outstanding Social Entrepreneur of the Schwab Foundation, for which is a regular panelist at the Davos meetings of the World Economic Forum. 

CAMBIA is an independent, international non-profit institute. For more than 17 years, CAMBIA has been creating new technologies, tools and paradigms to bring efficiency and equity to life-sciences enabled innovation.

In Spanish and Italian, CAMBIA means "change". This meaning is at the very heart of CAMBIA's mission.  We achieve our aims through three interconnected work products outlined below:

Patent Lens

The Patent Lens is an open access, open source, integrated informatics platform of worldwide patent data with tools to make patents and patent landscapes more transparent and navigable and to explore paths leading to fair and equitable innovation capabilities.

BiOS (Biological Open Source)

The BiOS Framework focuses on development and sharing of life-sciences technology through new collaboration and licensing tools and norms.

Bioforge & CAMBIA Materials

BioForge is a prototype portal to our open resource for design, invention, sharing and support of enabling technologies in the life sciences, with a view to providing a foundational 'stack' of tools that can be used by anyone for any purpose, working towards a 'commons of capability'.