Intellectual property laws are rearing their heads behind the scenes, and the question is how they should apply to ‘green technologies’.  It’s also a question of what differences there should be between the way IP law applies to the developed and developing worlds.

It’s a debate which has been happening in other areas for decades.  Drug companies and western governments have been accused of holding back treatments from the developing world to protect their patent rights.  The argument goes that by vigorously protecting patents in drugs such as anti-retrovirals, and refusing to allow generic versions to be produced, they are refusing care to millions of people.

Does the same argument apply over green technology as well?

The Intellectual Property Watch blog thinks it might:

The position of the Group of 77 plus China is fixed on saying that IP is important and represents a barrier to technology transfer, some delegates said. For developed countries, IP rights are not seen as preventing technology transfer but rather providing incentives for innovation.

In other words, developing countries are arguing that they need access to green technologies (presumably at cheap rates) if they are to control greenhouse emissions.  Developed countries (who are generally responsible for inventing the technology and who stand to gain from the Intellectual property in it) say that without them having strong rights to charge for their inventions, the inventions simply won’t be made.

The presence of China amongst the Group of 77 certainly complicates things – no doubt the US and EU will be rather sceptical of China crying poor over green technology, but it’s a very interesting source of debate.

When boiled down into brutal terms, it’s rather different from the debates about drugs.  In the realpolitik of trade debates, countries which hold IP rights can afford to sit by and do nothing about providing drugs to the developing world – they feel they have nothing to gain on the balance sheet from helping.

But in the case of climate change, the effects of pollution in the developing world have an impact on the rest of the world – it’s a problem which doesn’t respect national borders, and everyone has an equal interest in access to green technology being as widespread as possible.

Let’s hope that important debates like these are had out in the open and get some media coverage, instead of the same old arid talk about whose job it is to fix the climate.

And after such an appalling rehearsal with the drugs debate, let’s just hope the west gets the balance right this time around.

Image from tim tolle on Flickr.

The project initially had a much broader scope on IP-related debates – particularly questions of the role of IP law in encouraging development of clean technologies while also ensuring their deployment in the developing world.

Those issues didn’t end up making the cut, but during my interview with Harvard’s Lawrence Lessig, he drew an interesting bow between his until-recently pet issue of copyright and IP policy, and the problem of climate change policy.

Extracted here in full:

We have IP – copyright and patent, to deal with what economists call the problem of positive externalities, meaning I do something which creates a benefit to you, without you and I necessarily having any kind of agreement about that.  So we solve that problem by having monopolies granted by the state to what the economists call ‘internalise’ the positive externalities, so I get all the benefit and I create lots of good.

But as well as positive externalities, there are also negative externalities, so I run a coal-fired power plant, I produce carbon, I produce mercury into the atmosphere, these are all negative harms which I impose on my neighbours without necessarily compensating them for that.  And the government has a role there too in internalising negative externalities.  Global warming is a classic example of a negative externality, and the government has in my view an essential role in making sure that that negative externality is internalised, just like if works so hard to make sure that positive externalities are internalised.

The paradox is positive externalities, or the lack of dealing with positive externalities has never killed anybody or hurt anybody in the world.  And yet negative externalities like mercury in the atmosphere have caused enormous harm to the world.  But the United States government at least spends a significant chunk of its time worrying about internalising positive externalities while ignoring the negative externalities.

In the last 20 years, there have been 15 bills passed to deal with copyright, and internalising the positive externalities.  Not one bill to deal with the problem of global warming.  Now that’s just completely skewed priorities, right.  If anything we should be worried about the negative externalities first, and then get around to the positive ones, but not before we’ve dealt with the most critical negative externalities like global warming.

Image thanks to pawpaw67 on Flickr

The news that the ETS fable has remarkable parrallels in SuperTed and the Stolen Rocket Ship is somewhat newer.

Watch the episode, and imagine that the rocket ship is climate change policy.  Note the role of Ian MacFarlane.  Do not collect a prize for figuring out who plays Skeleton or Texas Pete’s other fat offsider.  Watch as the rocket ship spirals out of control.  Note how much more comfortable Skeleton becomes when he ends up in a skin-tight space suit.  Enjoy the exchange of;

Get off my legs skeleton, you’re pulling down my pants!

But I’ve got nothing else to hold on to.

Imagine the same exchange taking place in the shadow cabinet room.

If only the name of ‘SuperKev’ was actually deserved when it comes to climate change policy…