Bridges Trade BioRes Review • Volume 2 • Number 4 • December 2008

ICTSD Update: Intellectual property and the transfer of climate-related technologies

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While technology is often pointed to as a driving force of greenhouse gas emissions, it is also critical to meeting the challenges of climate change. That is why the development and transfer of technology has now been recognised as an essential aspect of the negotiations towards a post-2012 global climate agreement and it is a key pillar of the Bali Action Plan.

When Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) met for COP-13 last year in Bali, an Ad hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) was launched to facilitate cooperation on matters such as establishing a framework for enhanced technology transfer. The Expert Group on Technology Transfer (EGTT) also received a renewed mandate to advance the development, deployment, adoption, diffusion, and transfer of environmentally sound technologies to developing countries.

While both developed and developing countries acknowledge the need for technology transfer, the form and focus of collaboration remains unclear. It has become increasingly obvious that more information and ideas will be needed before Ministers can produce something tangible at the December 2009 meeting in Copenhagen, however. ICTSD is working to bridge these gaps by creating space for dialogue and through a joint study that looks at the role of patents in the development and transfer of technologies for addressing climate change.

Technological change offers important possibilities for reducing future emissions and eventually stabilising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. In long-term emission scenarios analysed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), technology showed the potential to significantly reduce future greenhouse gas emissions by improving technology efficiencies, introducing less carbon intensive sources of energy, and further developing carbon-free renewable energy sources.

There is still significant uncertainty, however, as to the most effective means to provide incentives for the rapid development and adoption of clean technologies. In particular, governments, experts and other stakeholders have called for additional research on the role of intellectual property (IP) in facilitating or hindering the development and dissemination of clean energy technologies.

On 4 June 2008, ICTSD organised an informal consultation and a side-event with a select group of experts under an Initiative on Climate Technology and Trade (ICTT). The purpose of the initiative was to look at the obstacles and potential points of intervention to help promote the transfer of climate-related technology. The initiative also sought to generate solutions-focused and policy-oriented outcomes that could be fed into the work of the relevant bodies dealing with climate change technology within the UNFCCC and other climate-related processes.

ICTSD is following up on the results of this meeting with a joint study with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the European Patent Office (EPO). By building on the three institutions’ initial work on climate-related technologies and specific areas of expertise, the project will advance the understanding of the role of patents in promoting access to clean technologies, and thus provide input into ongoing discussions on technology transfer in the context of the UNFCCC.

In general, the joint study aims to achieve three goals. First, it will provide analysis of patent trends and their implications for access to clean technologies in selected technological fields. Second, it will develop a methodology for the analysis of the impact of patent trends in the development and dissemination of clean technologies. Finally, the study will feed into ongoing international discussions and initiatives on climate change technologies.

In order to facilitate the analysis of the links between climate-related technologies and factors such as IP rights, ICTSD has built on existing identification of relevant technologies through technology mapping studies. These studies provide an overview of climate-mitigation technologies and goods within the various sectors identified by the IPCC.

Thus, they offer a broad view of technologies that are commercially available today as well as technologies that need another 5 to 10 years before commercialisation. To date, two studies - one focusing on the energy supply sector and another looking at the residential/building sector - have been completed and will provide the basis for the joint study on patents and clean technologies.

Studies on clean technologies in the past have looked primarily at industry characteristics and trends, focusing only on limited patent data. The additional quantitative and qualitative analysis offered by the current study will greatly enhance the existing body of knowledge on the links between patents and clean technologies.

In addition to this joint study, ICTSD has also commissioned two papers related to IP and technology transfer. The first will draw lessons from the global policy development on IP and public health. The second will analyse the potential role of new models of innovation in promoting innovation and technology transfer to address climate change.

For further information, please contact María Julia Oliva, mjoliva@ictsd.ch