World IP Day: how IP can go green
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) introduced the annual World IP Day campaign in 2000, designating April 26 (the day on which the WIPO Convention came into force in 1970) as World IP Day, to raise public awareness about the role that IP rights play in encouraging innovation and creativity and in supporting economic, social and cultural development.
This year all the physical World IP Day events that were planned have had to be cancelled in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the day itself is a Sunday. However, it is hoped that its significance will not go unnoticed and that the substance of this year’s theme “ Innovate for a Green Future” looking at how IP rights can support the transition to a sustainable, low-carbon economy will continue to gain momentum as the weeks, months and years pass.
IP rights might not be the first solution that springs to mind when considering how to tackle the global climate crisis, but they have a key role to play owing to their impact and influence on technological innovation and business, and in turn consumers.
The recent surge in environmental consciousness and Greta Thunberg’s emergence on the international stage was perhaps a factor in WIPO’s decision to choose green IP as its theme for this year, stating on its website that “World IP Day 2020 puts innovation—and the IP rights that support it—at the heart of efforts to create a green future”.
In this article, we take a brief snapshot of some of the ways in which IP rights, laws and systems are supporting the emergence of a green economy across the globe.
Patents
The very nature of the patent system, requiring the disclosure of the invention, assists in the dissemination of green technology, which is then accessible to all businesses and organisations, including those in less developed countries.
To interrogate such systems to find climate change technologies it is clearly important to have robust and easy-to-navigate databases and search facilities. Examples of improvements in this area include:
