A Paradoxical Interaction between Intellectual Property Rights, Technological Innovation and Climate Change

摘要

The TRIPS Agreement and the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) apply differently to energy and innovation. The former provides a strong IPRs protection regime in order to incentivise innovative inventions; the latter obliges Member States to cooperate in the development and diffusion of environmentally sound technologies pertinent to climate change. However, with its current framework, TRIPS seems to be a barrier to the diffusion of technologies, as patents for clean technologies lie greatly in private hands who are, in most cases, not willing to share their technologies. Consequently, it is opined that the TRIPS Agreement be amended to be in synch with the technology diffusion objective of the Kyoto Protocol. Alternatively, massive state investment in research and development (R&D); endowment of a global climate change technology fund (GCCTF); international award schemes for best free climate change mitigating technologies; international law (technology deployment and human capital development) regulatory mechanism; and state designated payment system for technology could all be veritable initiatives to obviate the barrier posed by TRIPS Agreement to the objective of the Kyoto Protocol. These may all have their nuances and subtle challenges, but they have potentials for resolving or substantially reducing the TRIPS-Kyoto application conflict.