Is there a research exemption?

What a "research exemption" or "research license" means is that "monopoly rights are retained over delivery-related downstream development".

The BiOS license is not being segmented such that a research license is granted and then licensees have to come back for a commercial license under different terms.  We feel that good research should be able to lead to products and public goods.  Therefore, the BiOS license grant allows the worldwide royalty-free making and dissemination of products embodying the technology or using the methods, whether for commercial purposes or public good uses.

Many good scientists probably don't realise that by using patented technology under a perceived or real "research exemption" they are making the decision that anyone who wants to use the technology anywhere in a deliverable will have to "partner" with the patent rights-holder(s).

This is a decision of such magnitude that it shouldn't be made unaware or lightly.  Such decisions early in the research can completely block the path to delivery by all but a few major multinationals.  Any other entity wanting to go past "research" would need such a net of permissions that the painstaking downstream work to transfer the research from models into useful germplasm, test and scale-up is rendered uneconomic.

Scientists who have realised that early decisions to use whatever technology is easiest to hand "contaminate" the entire results consider that the "best" technology to use to do "good science" isn't necessarily the technology available under a "research exemption".  Quite the opposite--if there's a "research exemption" associated with it, anyone wanting to see the science go anywhere should avoid it!