Sharing Technology To Meet A Common Challenge

Climate change presents a collective challenge to the international community. Meeting that challenge is necessarily a collective endeavor. No other environmental threat has such a universal quality. In no other field can activity in one location potentially have such a direct impact across the globe. So it is no surprise that the world is turning to collective and collaborative initiatives to address climate change mitigation and adaptation. The innovation and widespread dissemination of new technologies will unquestionably form an integral part of this response. Technologies can both facilitate mitigation of climate change - such as those concerning carbon capture and sequestration, wind power or photovoltaics - and also enable communities to adapt to climate change - such as those for combating desertification or enabling agriculture in drier or more saline soils.

The earlier action is taken, the more widely new technologies are disseminated, the better the chance of significantly slowing the impact of climate change. This means that the rate of innovation, and the speed and breadth of dissemination of new technologies, are both critically important.

Delivering to a global public an effective, commercially and technically feasible technology is rarely a stand-alone exercise. It usually requires a package of contributions from various sources. One product or process might combine breakthrough research, platform technologies, manufacturing know-how and downstream tweaks and field improvements that can greatly increase the practical effectiveness of a particular technology. So getting results does not just mean interesting findings in the laboratory or workshop: it means finding the best way of combining input and building pathways to develop and distribute finished technologies.

Companies must typically negotiate licenses and other forms of access to technology held by others to bring new products to market. They may also invest considerable effort in locating optimal technologies. But 'business as usual' may not be sufficient in exceptional times. The urgent need for technology diffusion and the complexity of some technology fields critical to addressing climate change lead to an active debate about how best to organize innovation structures and diffusion of technology. To the extent that technologies are covered by intellectual property (IP), particularly patents, this opens up a debate about how IP rights can best be managed and regulated so as to yield optimal outcomes both for innovators and society at large.

Policymakers are actively investigating appropriate collaborative structures and other means of pooling and sharing technologies. A host of ideas are circulating for arrangements such as patent pools, patent commons, open source innovation, open licensing arrangements and non-assertion pledges or covenants. These have typically been developed on a voluntary basis, by technology holders who realize that the benefits of pooling technologies from several sources outweigh any immediate advantage of closely restricting access to their technology. In these cases, there is a common incentive to share technology. This has been the experience, for in- stance, with audio and video technologies involving a common standard, such as DVD and MPEG technology, where shared interests have led companies to form patent pools or joint licensing...