Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 9 • Number 21 • 27th November 2009

Lobby Group Opposes Proposed Changes to Green Technology Patents

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As the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen draws nearer, developing countries are pushing for measures on flexibilities and exceptions in intellectual property rights to ensure greater access to green technology. But a new industry-sponsored study suggests that such a move would be detrimental to the European green job market.

Countries such as China and India argue that, because of their history, developed countries should bear the burden of climate change adaptation. In addition to providing financing for adapting industry to a new green reality, new green technologies should be subject to an expanded use of existing flexibilities in the implementation of intellectual property rights including resorting to ‘compulsory licensing’, they say. Under compulsory licensing, a government can authorize the use of patented technology by third parties without the consent of right holder but with appropriate compensation,.

Such a licensing system has been used in the health area where, for example, a particular life saving drugs is prohibitively expensive.

But critics of the current proposal say that applying the same concept to climate change technology could jeopardise millions of jobs in the developed world that focus on research and production of green technology.

“Our study clearly indicates that involuntary measures, such as compulsory licensing and other anti-IP efforts, will hinder the EU’s ability to reinvigorate its economy, create jobs, and lead the world in green technologies,” said Michael Taylor of the Coalition for Innovation, Employment, and Development (CIED) - a Geneva-based industry coalition.

The CIED paper asserts that a strong intellectual property (IP) system will support the development of green technologies and the creation of over 2 million jobs in the EU over the next 20 years. The report strongly urges a position of solely financial assistance for developing countries with regard to climate change technology transfer.

Taylor said that the business community is in need of a predictable intellectual property environment in order to plan research and development investments, he said. Giving technologies to developing countries must not be an option, he added.

A similar position exists across the Atlantic, where the US Chamber of Commerce is reported to be ramping up its efforts to ensure that climate change negotiations don’t undermine IPRs in relation to environmentally sound technologies (ESTs). The lobby group says it is concerned that UN climate change negotiations will erode the position of corporations holding patents on existing and future technologies.

For their part, developing countries argue that the scale and urgency of the climate change challenges requires exceptional measures to speed up technology diffusion to combat climate change, including through ensuring that the intellectual property system is made supportive of such efforts, including by the use of exceptions and flexibilities.

Climate change issues will be discussed at length at the 12th EU-China Summit, which will take place on 30 November in Nanjing, China. The UNFCCC’s 15th Conference of the Parties gets underway on 7 December in Copenhagen, Denmark.

More information

The CIED report can be accessed here: http://tinyurl.com/yfpxe23.

ICTSD Reporting; “China, India push for ‘patent free’ green tech,” EURACTIVE, 23 November 2009.