A peculiar idea has taken hold in climate policy circles: That intellectual property rights stand in the way of solving the climate crisis. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres recently called for removing “intellectual property constraints” on renewable energy technologies, arguing that they impede the rapid transition we need.
Proponents of this view argue that patents and other IP protections prevent green technologies from spreading quickly. But this overlooks the reality of how these transformative innovations are developed, scaled, and adopted globally.
Research, including our own at the University of Cambridge, shows that patents can promote both the development and the distribution of green technologies.
It is no accident that innovators have developed many of the most successful, high-impact green technologies in Western countries with strong patent regimes. Patents incentivize risk-taking by granting companies exclusive rights for a set period, giving them the opportunity to earn a return. For universities, startups, and others developing green technologies, patent protection is often essential to attract investment funding to scale to a critical size.
In the first place, patents essentially assign ownership rights. Thereby, the holders of the ownership rights are empowered to make decisions about how to use them. Technology owners can then keep patents for internal use, license them exclusively to other companies, or even share rights non-exclusively via voluntary licenses with nonprofit institutions, NGOs, or even foreign governments.
Far from restricting collaboration, patents enable technology transfer, potentially accelerating the global impact of green technologies. To be clear, the patent system is not preventing anyone from sharing their rights. It is the owners, whom the patent system enables to make decisions about sharing their patented technologies.
Successful technology transfer furthermore tends to involve more than just granting patent rights; it also requires sharing critical know-how. Importantly, licensing allows companies to leverage their IP to exercise control over collaboration terms, such as compliance with safe manufacturing practices or sustainability standards.
As green technologies mature and small companies grow to a stable size, some adopt “semi-open” IP models that balance protection with wider implementation. Nutriset, for example, created large-scale impact through a franchise model, granting patent access and sharing know-how with partners, primarily in less developed countries.
This approach spans sectors from renewable energy to waste reduction. For example, EREMA Group’s breakthrough recycling technology now processes 14.5 million tonnes of plastic waste annually across 108 countries. While patents safeguarded their research phase, the company actively promoted industry-wide adoption rather than keeping the innovation to itself.
Patents not only create an attractive value proposition for investors but also give owners control over how to scale and deploy their technology. In short, by clarifying technology ownership, patents provide the foundation for functioning markets.
But clearly, the status quo is not perfect. We should do more to bring cutting-edge green technologies to other countries, including developing countries. But the biggest obstacle is not patents. In fact, many companies do not even patent green technologies in developing nations because of weak patent regimes there, with the cost of securing protection often outweighing any commercial incentive.
The lack of strong rights can actually make collaboration more difficult. Without clear ownership rights, structuring licensing agreements and technology-sharing partnerships becomes more complicated. The solution is not to weaken the patent system but to make it easier for innovators to claim ownership to be then able to share their technologies.
In order to address global challenges, patent offices should not only streamline their processes for green tech patents, reducing costs and complexity for firms looking to expand into emerging markets; they should step out of their comfort zone and be more innovative themselves to better leverage the position they occupy within innovation systems. For instance, they might consider something radical as actively helping to funnel investments into promising green technologies. This could support innovators in securing investment to accelerate technology development and deployment.
Promising models already exist. Japan’s Green Technology Package Program combines patent licensing with technical support and knowledge transfer. The United Kingdom and other countries are testing expedited patent approvals for green technologies. These approaches show that patent rights and rapid adoption can and must work together — after all, we cannot share technologies that have not been invented in the first place.
Far from blocking progress, patent rights create the foundation for both innovation and the widespread adoption of green technology. To maximize this, we should evolve the patent systems to be more effective.
Streamlining processes, improving access, and encouraging broader participation is helpful, but patent offices will need to be more innovative than that. At the same time, we need to better educate both innovators and the public about how the system works. Patents often do not stand in the way of technology-sharing — on the contrary, they enable owners to make decisions about sharing their patented technology.
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