The shrinking snow of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, East Africa is often cited as evidence of Climate Change photo credit Mtaalam
The Role of IP in Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation
MIPLC Alumni Association IP Round Table for July 2009
Moderator: Eliamani Laltaika
“As human activity caused the problem so too can human activity find the solution”
Dr. Francis Gurry, Director General,
World Intellectual Property Organization WIPO
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But what exactly can IP law, policy, institutions and professionals contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation? This is the main question for our IP Round Table (Round Blog!?) for this month. Other cross cutting issues can also be raised.
Kindly share your thoughts and insights with fellow Alumni, faculty and friends. Click "Add comments" bellow
THANK YOU!
I would like to respond to Eliamani's question ...
ReplyDeleteCan IP play a role in mitigating problems of climate change and adaptation?
My simple answer ... yes, of course it can.
My slightly more complex answer ...
IP can play a role in mitigating problems in almost any field of human endeavor or any field related to the management of the natural environment. IP is never the only important factor in problem solving, and is often not even a primary factor; but it is sometimes a key to finding solutions.
However, what I do not understand is why IP is any more relevant to climate change than it is to any other critical problem currently facing the world. What about food production, energy efficiency, tropical disease vaccines, software tools for disabled people, agricultural production, automotive software, water purification, etc, etc.? Why have commentators at WIPO and elsewhere apparently chosen climate change as a special topic of relevance to intellectual property. I don't get it.
As I see it, IP is relevant to climate change issues ... but no more relevant than it is to countless other contemporary topics and problems facing the world.
Kelvin Willoughby
Mahidol University
Bangkok, Thailand
In terms of providing incentives to researchers or companies to look for solutions to solve climate change, the IP system may act in the same way like for other fields of technology. In this way, in many cases green technologies, replacement of old and contaminating technologies are protected by IP rights. One of the questions to ask is what business strategies will these IP owners follow at the moment of providing licenses to developing countries on the use of these green but expensive technologies.
ReplyDeleteWill these IP rights represent a barrier for those efforts to mitigate climate change at global level? What kind of solutions will be given to those nations that can not afford the switch to greener technologies and will on the contrary continue using cheap, but contaminating, old tech?
I know that IP owners of green technologies are becoming concerned that patent rights in this field could be under threat, and they are proposing to team up to defend their rights.
Other questions: May be a patent pool the solution to assure global access to green technologies and at the same time fear compensation to IP owners? May a nation grant a compulsory license on patented green technologies, arguing pubic health arguments?
Mario ... it is great to hear from you!
ReplyDeleteYou are right. So called "green technologies" are, from a legal point of view, no different than any other kind of technology with regards to patentability. The patentability of inventions has basically nothing to do with whether or not they consist of "clean" technology rather than "dirty" technology.
If private sector organizations, rather than governments or wealthy charitable organizations, are going to be relied upon by the world's people to develop the lion's share of green technologies, then the intrinsic proprietary character of patents will inevitably play a channeling role in affecting investment in application of such inventions. If we want to avoid that fact then it will be necessary for there to be a massive increase in public-sector expenditure, worldwide, on the development and use of green technologies. That will, of course, also require massive increases in revenue to the public sector (mostly through taxes) as a precondition. Let's hope that the most of our fellow human beings are as happy about being taxed heavily for this purpose as you and I might be!
No doubt some countries will impose compulsory licenses on producers of environmentally gentle technologies, based on some logic along the lines you have suggested. However ... could this have the perverse side effect that if those same countries did not also impose compulsory licenses on "dirty" technologies, then the profit-oriented private companies being relied upon to develop new technologies would take that as an incentive to invest further in "non-green" technologies that were still eligible for patent protection. Compulsory licenses on "green technology" could have the unintended side-effect of making non-green technology even more easily available to poorer countries, since that would be where the incentive for private sector investment was the strongest. Would we really like to see that happen?
My preferred approach for poor countries is to find ways to facilitate the creation of "green" technology by people and organizations in the poor countries themselves; and to then use the global IP system as a vehicle to provide financial incentives for those "indigenous" green technologies to be exported t the rest of the world.