Intellectual property regimes stem from the desire of governments to stimulate research and to promote technology transfer by conferring exclusive rights to inventors. It is believed that these rights also create incentives to invest in research and to continuously improve existing technology. However, these exclusive rights could also have the adverse effect of slowing down research and promoting an academic culture of secrecy.

With the fast development of the human genetics field and especially since the sequencing of the human genome, many legal, ethical and social issues related to the patenting of genes and essential research tools have arisen.

IPGen aims to gather normative texts, policies and literature pertaining to the interaction between human genetics and these legal, ethical and social issues. The scope of this database is international as well as national and regional.