The role of patent protection in (clean/green) technology transfer

Global climate change mitigation will require the development and diffusion of a large number and variety of new technologies. How will patent protection affect this process? In this paper we first review the evidence on the role of patents in international technology transfer in general, finding that patent protection in a host country encourages technology transfer to that country but that its impact on development is much less ambiguous. We then discuss the implications of these findings and other technology-specific evidence for the diffusion of climate change related technologies. We conclude that the “double externality” problem, that is the presence of both environmental and knowledge externalities, implies that IP may not be the ideal policy instrument to encourage innovation in this area and that the range and variety of green technologies means that patent protection may be neither available nor useful in some settings. 1 Paper for the Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal. Parts of this survey are based on presentations by the first author to a WIPO Conference in Mexico City, January 2008 and a KDI Conference in Seoul, February 2010. We are grateful to participants at those conferences and to Fabio Montobbio for comments on an earlier draft.