Saving the earth: the role of collaboration

According to NASA, the earth’s average surface temperature has risen by about 0.8°C (1.4°F) since 1880.

Climate change is brought about by a broad range of global phenomena created, inter alia, by the burning of fossil fuels, which add heat-trapping gases to the earth’s atmosphere. Effects of climate change include a rise in sea levels, ice mass loss in Greenland, and extreme weather events.

Innovation and green technology transfer have emerged as important considerations for fighting climate change and global warming.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has a policy, called WIPO Green, which seeks to address climate change and use innovative ‘green’ technology solutions.

WIPO Green is a multi-stakeholder platform aimed at promoting the diffusion of green technologies and innovation.

According to a 2014 report by WIPO, “Global challenges brief: Incentivising the adoption of green technology on a global scale”, technology transfer will play a vital role in addressing climate change.

The report said that the three main vectors of international technology transfer are foreign direct investment, licensing and imports.

“Well-developed systems to protect and enforce intellectual property rights have been found to stimulate technology diffusion by providing secure channels for sharing know-how,” the report added.

The report said at the time that environmental innovation, measured by patenting activity, is concentrated in the US, Germany, Japan and Korea.

However, the usefulness of this environmental innovation in response to climate change “will depend on the effective diffusion of these technologies from the place of invention to the regions where they are needed most”, the report said.

In December last year, China-based newspaper China Daily published an article outlining a new website which aims to serve as an economical and convenient way of improving international cooperation in the ‘clean’ technology sector.

Clean technology is any process or product that reduces negative environmental impact through energy improvements.

The website, called TEDA International Clean Tech Transfer Platform, is supported by the government and provides news, information releases, IP protection and cross-border communication services.

John Deal, environmental control officer at technology commercialisation company IX Power Clean Water, told China Daily: “In the 27 years I have been doing technology transfer, we never had this kind of platform for international cooperation.

“Being able to have a platform for innovation is itself an innovation,” he added.

A growing sector

Catherine Burke, partner at law firm Freeths, says: “Green technology is very much a growing field, but one which requires a great deal of start-up investment, both in terms of assets and IP.

“This makes it an attractive field for investment and collaboration (particularly across borders where one firm has the IP and the other the local network), which necessarily involves tech transfer in one form or another.”

The US Department of Energy has used science and innovation to create new green technology in its bid to beat climate change.

The energy department, according to its website, finances “cutting-edge research and the deployment of innovative clean energy technologies”.

A report published by the department in 2016, “From lab to market: Examples of clean energy R&D”, listed its research and development (R&D) achievements. These included solar panels, lithium ion batteries, LED lighting, wind turbines, smart grid technologies, refrigerators, carbon capture and nuclear energy.

In 1994, the first solar panel to exceed 30% conversion efficiency was created and researchers have continued to pioneer solar technologies since that time.

The department said in its report that scientists at Oak Ridge, Idaho and Argonne National Laboratories are currently developing a new generation of technologies, including advanced reactors and small modular reactors.

Clean energy has never been cheaper, because of investments made ten, 20 and 30 years ago, according to the department.

“This is significant progress, but it is not enough to meet our long-term climate goals. Put simply, we can’t beat climate change with only the technology we have today.”

Two sides of the coin

Eric Lane, founder and principal of law firm Green Patent Law, tells WIPR: “The innovation and development in green technologies is in the so-called richer countries—the OECD countries—so that’s one reason that technology transfer internationally is going to be important to get those innovations commercialised and deployed all over the world.”

He explains that there are “two sides of the coin” for technology transfer. The first, he explains, is that “patents are territorial, so a patent in the US doesn’t protect you in Europe and vice versa, and that goes for all of the different countries around the world”.

"As governments around the world continue to push for a greater proportion of energy coming from renewable sources, the rewards for green tech companies will only continue to grow."

“For a US company, a US patent means possibly not having protection in China or India or Bangladesh—maybe that goes into the calculus as to whether they want to do business there. That’s one consideration from the perspective of the manufacturer or the technology innovator.”

He adds: “The other side of the coin is that in some of the countries where patent protection is less common, they can commercialise technologies that are patented elsewhere.

“The fact that the owner of the technology has a patent in the US doesn’t stop them from going ahead and making and using the technology in India or China.”

Referring to green technology, Lane says that it must include the moral and ethical considerations around climate change.

“One of the biggest things to come up in the annual climate change talks is the apportioning of responsibility of more man-made climate change and … the US and China bear the bulk of responsibility for climate change.”

The Paris Agreement

In December 2015, 195 countries adopted the first universal legally binding climate change deal.

Known as the Paris Agreement, it acts as a bridge between today’s policies and attempts to neutralise climate change before the end of the century.

In January 30, UK newspaper The Independent reported that US President Donald Trump would pull the US out of the Paris Agreement. Trump was expected to sign an executive order leaving the deal.

Myron Ebell, who took charge of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team, told the newspaper: “I expect Donald Trump to be very assiduous in keeping his promises, despite all of the flack he is going to get from his opponents.”

If the US does leave the Paris Agreement, green technology transfer may be put on the back-burner for years in the country.

Burke says: “From a corporate perspective, the most secure way to work collaboratively is to merge and become a single entity. This prevents the possibility of any disputes between separate parties down the line and ensures that all proprietary IP and know-how remains in the possession and control of a single entity.

“An example of collaboration in action in relation to solar technology was the merger of Suntech Power (a Chinese solar panel company) with MSK (a Japanese photovoltaic-technology company), announced in 2006.”

Burke says that the preferred types of collaboration (and therefore tech transfer) must also be viewed in light of the technology and IP at issue.

“Unlike pharmaceuticals, where a patented chemical formula can totally corner the relevant market for the lifetime of the patent, green technology patents are far less potent in terms of monopolisation and can generally be worked around and improved upon in a relatively short time-span.”

Burke adds: “As such, the most valuable IP that a green tech firm is likely to have is its confidential know-how as to how best to manufacture and exploit its technology. This can and should be protected by contractual obligations of confidentiality, but with every additional entity you work and share technology with, there is an inherent weakening in this protection.

“It is for this reason that tech transfer, investment and collaboration in green tech has to be approached with some imagination and innovation,” says Burke.

She adds that creative approaches are clearly worth the effort as tech transfer and collaboration are increasingly taking place in the green technology market. As governments around the world continue to push for a greater proportion of energy coming from renewable sources, the rewards for green tech companies will only continue to grow, she says.

The future

It is sometimes difficult for nations and governments to acknowledge humankind’s impact on the environment, and films such as “The Day After Tomorrow” bring home the frightening truth about global warming.

Perhaps the perils of global warming and climate change are best summarised by broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough.

In the final episode of his latest BBC wildlife documentary series, “Planet Earth II”, Attenborough said while standing on London skyscraper The Shard: “Looking down on this great metropolis, the ingenuity with which we continue to reshape the surface of our planet is very striking. But it’s also sobering. It reminds me of just how easy it is for us to lose our connection with the natural world.

“Yet it’s on this connection that the future of both humanity and the natural world depend. It’s surely our responsibility to do everything within our power to create a planet that provides a home not just for us, but for all life on Earth.”

Innovative green technology is one way of maintaining the connection between humanity and the natural world and ensuring that we look after our earth.