Designing surfaces with antifouling and antimicrobial properties has an important route to solve problems, such as infections and fouling, in healthcare and industrial applications. Recently, there has been considerable interest in developing surfaces with polymers because of their distinct properties, such as their length scale, their processability, low cost, tunable properties, and diverse functionalities. This article reviews the polymer systems developed as antifouling-antimicrobial surface coatings, termed as biopassive and bioactive polymers respectively. Many different types of bioactive and biopassive polymeric systems and their limitations are presented. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.