A Proposal for a Clean Technology Directive: European Patent Law and Climate Change
This article charts the conflicted, dissonant policies of the European Union towards intellectual property and climate change. It contends that there is a mismatch between the empirical work of the European Patent Office and the quietist policy options contemplated by the European Union. This article contends that the European Union needs to develop a Clean Technology Directive to allow for a differentiated approach to patent law and clean technologies – especially given the past complicity of the European Union in global warming and climate change.
Historically, under the Statute of Monopolies 1623 (UK), patent law provided exclusive rights to inventors for “the sole working or making of any manner of new manufactures” in return for the dissemination of information about the inventions. The legal regime was very much bound up with the industrial revolution, providing incentives for the manufacture of new inventions by factories – William Blake’s “Dark Satanic Mills”. Estelle Derclaye reflects that, accordingly, patent law has a tarnished reputation for promoting dirty, polluting technologies: “The question then arises: could intellectual property rights (IPRs) be the cause of global warming? After all, the industrial revolution has brought with it IPRs, among the most relevant of which is the right to protect inventions. And the primary aim of patent law is to give an incentive to inventors to invent new products, processes and machines. Copyright law’s rationale is similar. Some of the greatest inventions of the last two centuries include the car, the train, the plane, the refrigerator, and the computer, and with them comes the use of energy, generally oil and coal, to make them work. These are some of the causes that contribute the most to the increase in levels of CO2 in the planet’s atmosphere. For instance, a third of CO2 emissions in the European Union (EU) are generated by transport. The intellectual property academic community has so far paid very little attention, if any, to this increasingly important issue.”
| Copyright: | © Lexxion Verlagsgesellschaft mbH | |
| Quelle: | Issue 03 / 2011 (Oktober 2011) | |
| Seiten: | 10 | |
| Preis: | € 41,65 | |
| Autor: | Matthew Rimmer  | |
| Artikel weiterleiten | In den Warenkorb legen
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