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Environment
Green Technology Patents and Climate Change - Is it Finally ‘Easy Being Green?’ By Fergus Maclean, Bachelor of Arts (International Relations) and Bachelor of Business Administration, Australian National University & Katharina Neumann, Deputy Editor, SS Law and Political Science The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on the effects of climate change concluded with the assertion that “any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable future.” This announcement reinforces the notion that climate change needs to be fought on all fronts. One such front is green technology, which combines technology, science, and innovation to allow human production and the natural environment to co-exist in a mutually inclusive way. Examples of green technology range from wellknown and widely adopted innovations such as LED lights, wind turbines, and solar panels, to more niche developments such as organic farming techniques that reduce soil exhaustion, or using concentrated red seaweed in cattle feed, which has the capacity to reduce methane emissions by over 90 per cent. As developing climate-friendly innovations has become a key priority in national and international environmental policies, intellectual property regimes play an increasingly important role in securing a safe environmental operating space. In particular, patent law is one of the most important regulatory vehicles promoting technological innovation in the sphere of climate policy. Patent grant procedures can often extend over several years - a cumbersome process that is criticised as stifling innovation. It is submitted that fast-tracking green technology patents is a key approach to encourage innovation in this sector and to send the right message in the fight against climate change. Patents are time-limited rights that prevent all other inventors from making, using, selling, or importing the patented inventions, ensuring that innovators can protect and utilise their inventions. They act as a tool for forwarding progress in science, technology, and industry. Patents grant limited-term monopoly rights in respect of new, innovative, and industrially beneficial inventions, thereby restricting the use of these inventions in the short run but creating societal payoffs in the long run. This encourages future innovation and development as they provide inventors with a competitive advantage. However, as patent applications are extremely detailed and undergo many steps of consideration by different expert groups, the process of obtaining a patent can often take years. In this regard, programmes for fast-tracking patent applications allow for accelerated examination of patent applications, aiming to bypass these long waiting periods. Countries such as the UK, Australia, Israel, Japan, Brazil, and the US have launched fast-tracking schemes for green technology patents, which can have real benefits in the fight against climate change. The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) states that fast-track procedures reduce the time from filing to grant by several years compared to ordinary examination. This acceleration allows patent applicants to licence and use their technologies earlier. Thus, green technology can become effective within a shorter time frame, leading to reduced emissions and expediting the effectiveness of green inventions. Further, such a procedure allows the early publication of the patent which increases the diffusion of the technical knowledge of the patent. An LSE study entitled Fast-Tracking ‘Green’ Patent Applications has shown that fast-track patents receive more than twice as many citations as patents of similar value filed through the traditional route in the short term. This diffusion of knowledge is welcome due to the urgency of the climate crisis as it increases development and innovation in the green tech sector, which leads to expansion of this sector, producing practices to combat
