Green technology and Intellectual property

The world is changing. The pollution made by mankind in the last couple of centuries has left the Earth with little green space. If this continues, the world will be sure to reach the point of no return. Every government knows about this predicament, therefore, they have made many commitments such as in the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference or COP26. However, the commitments require actual actions to back up and in our current era, innovations are the fastest and most obvious way to reach the goal of a green world. Following up again, to back up innovations, IP is the key.

Innovations that support the building of a green world are known as green technology. 

To solve the global crisis on climate change, green technology must be more popularized to the public in order to be mass-produced in every region.

However, as with the Covid-19 vaccines predicament, innovations in green technology also have the same issue, IP protection. 

For most innovations, the protection of IP through a patent can reach up to 20 years, even 25 years for some special cases. 

Accordingly, some have argued that to build a green world and/or have an effective plan to reach that goal, the innovations of green technology nature should not be patented. 

However, will that initiative actually be good for the fight against pollution or will it be a hindrance to all future innovations and discourage the innovators?

Expert opinions 

Fabian Klein, counsel at Ashurst in Frankfurt, expressed his view on the matter that as with every other innovation, green or not, the IP rights serve as an incentive to motivate the innovators to learn, research, and be rewarded for their efforts. 

For green technologies, Klein said that although IP rights may obstruct the spreading of the tech and may hinder the fight against climate change, in the long run, the benefits will likely outweigh the drawbacks.

Klein said: “Usually when you think about green IP, you think about how green technologies can be best shared, and implemented all around the world so that it has the most impacts. But once you have an IP right, it really functions the other way around. It enables you to prohibit other people from using the technology.”

Klein publicly opposes the idea that green technologies should not be patented in order to be freely distributable as from his point of view, this method will support the cause in the near future but will obstruct any additional innovations to be created in the long run: “If you have to invest in it and everybody else can use it, why should you do it? Why not wait for somebody else to do it? And then nothing happens in the end.”

Once again, Klein emphasized that green innovations are basically the same as any other innovations in relation to IP matters. Therefore, there should be no prejudice or bias when comparing the two: “It gives you an incentive to really start and work on something, and when you make an invention, you get an exclusivity right which helps you to amortize the costs that you had in inventing it.” 

Nonetheless, although there is no difference in nature, the idea between the 2 types of innovations can be exploited. 

As Klein has pointed out, there is some difference in the mindset of inventors of green technologies compared to other inventors. 

While conventional inventors usually want to keep the invention to themselves in order to exploit the full benefits of the innovations, the inventors of green technologies while still wanting to make a good profit from the technologies, are often more open to sharing them for better terms, such as by licensing them out, because to some extent their aim of inventing the technologies is for the good of humanity.

Lastly, Klein also offered a different angle on the matter of green innovations. As a patent is an obvious answer for the protection of innovations, trademark rights can also be utilized to create a propaganda marketing strategy for the innovations. He said: “Trademarks will not make a product green, but they can communicate that a product is green.”

AAA IPRIGHT – Global IP – Global Trademark Registration

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