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[Aidan, “Patent law is hampering climate mitigation. We have a solution.", Grist50, 08-16-2022, https://grist.org/fix/opinion/climate-technology-patent-law-innovators-solution/, accessed 07-19-2024, GDI-SS.]

That window of exclusivity is somewhat arbitrary but has become standard throughout the world. Although the patent system has served inventors well, it risks being an obstacle to the widespread adoption of technologies that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Many of the people and places that would benefit most from these innovations cannot afford the licensing fees, and so the tools that could lead to a low-carbon, or even carbon-negative, future remain out of reach to them.

[Brenda M. "Preserving the Fruits of Labor: Impediments to University Inventor Mobility," Tennessee Law Review 89, no. 1 (Fall 2021): 1-66 heinonline gdi-tm]

Some commentators have noted that amendments to Bayh-Dole have been rather difficult to obtain in practice. 358 Lobbying by universities and industry would be expected, as they have strong interests in retaining the status quo with regard to patent protection. 359 For example,' over three dozen universities spent millions of dollars in their attempts to influence recent patent reform legislation. 360 As a result, the America Invents Act (AIA) includes provisions that provide special treatment for academic institutions, such as reduced fees and immunity from a prior use defense. 361 Nonetheless, a narrow amendment such as the one proposed might not raise as many concerns.

[Brenda M. "Preserving the Fruits of Labor: Impediments to University Inventor Mobility," Tennessee Law Review 89, no. 1 (Fall 2021): 1-66 heinonline gdi-tm]

The amendment proposed in this Article is narrowly crafted to address the specific effects of unduly limiting university inventor mobility. Although amending the Bayh-Dole Act to provide a presumptive right to practice for university inventors would address situations involving federally-funded patented technology, it would not require universities to allow access to all innovation-essential components, such as data or materials. As such, the proposed amendment would still require universities to act in accordance with their mission statements, which typically state that universities will act to further public benefit. 369 By restricting the amendment to address university inventors, the proposal recognizes the importance of tacit knowledge in developing nascent inventions, and any injurious effects on innovation incentives will be minimized. The ability to rebut the presumptive right to practice recognizes that exclusivity may be necessary to support not only commercialization of the invention in question, but also for the research and development of inventions that do not succeed but are necessary for innovation. As will be discussed in the next section, other proposals to amend Bayh-Dole that have not been adopted have been far more extensive.370

[Brenda M. "Preserving the Fruits of Labor: Impediments to University Inventor Mobility," Tennessee Law Review 89, no. 1 (Fall 2021): 1-66 heinonline gdi-tm]

One potential solution to address some of the issues related to university inventor mobility described previously would be to modify the Bayh-Dole Act. The proposed amendment would require universities to allow a presumptive right to practice for university inventors on payment of a reasonable royalty, or as otherwise agreed between the inventors and the parent university.

[Brenda M. "Preserving the Fruits of Labor: Impediments to University Inventor Mobility," Tennessee Law Review 89, no. 1 (Fall 2021): 1-66 heinonline gdi-tm]

This Part examines how to address possible harms when academic inventors seek to depart from their universities. In particular, it raises and assesses various proposals to address potential detrimental effects on the dissemination of knowledge and innovation arising from limitations on university inventor mobility.347 Due to the significant risk of deleterious effects on innovation incentives for many of the proposals, the best alternatives would be to modify the Bayh-Dole Act to allow inventors a presumptive right to practice on payment of a reasonable royalty or to place conditions on government incentive structures to encourage university inventor involvement in development.

[Brenda M. "Preserving the Fruits of Labor: Impediments to University Inventor Mobility," Tennessee Law Review 89, no. 1 (Fall 2021): 1-66 heinonline gdi-tm]

In considering how best to promote innovation in the challenging situation of university inventor departure, various alternatives will be assessed, though none is without flaws. For many possibilities, the _likelihood of deleterious effects on innovation incentives is concerning.27 This Article proposes a-measured approach: a narrow modification to the Bayh-Dole Act to provide a presumptive right for university inventors to practice their inventions on payment of a reasonable royalty. Because the proposed amendment would allow for the presumption to be overcome under certain circumstances, it would have a minimal adverse effect on innovation incentives, if any. As an alternative proposal,• funding agencies could impose conditions on government incentive structures to encourage universities to support departing inventor involvement in · development. Of course, any proposal should be informed through empirical analysis and additional discussion.

[Christopher J. Jr., et al. "The Hidden Cost of University Patents." Berkeley Business Law Journal, vol. 21, no. 1, 2024, pp. 203-249. HeinOnline -tm]

The current state of university patents-especially with respect to the incentives inherent in the patent regime that privileges university-generated research and patenting-is a quagmire. As we explain in this article, a substantial body of scholarship questions the effectiveness, efficiency, and wisdom of university patents in general and the Bayh-Dole Act in particular.1so It is unclear to what extent patent ownership causes universities to generate more valuable innovation, and there is limited evidence that this goal actually has been fulfilled.1s1 Thus, it is difficult to justify subsidizing university research both directly through grants and indirectly through patents, and there is some evidence that the justifications provided work far better in theory than in practice.

[Martin, Donald, “Reconsidering the Bayh-Dole Act and the Current University Invention Ownership Model,” Research Policy 38, GDI-JCR]

For the university, placing inventions in the public domain would ameliorate current concerns about commercialization’s influence upon its mission and faculty. In many cases, it would lower the cost and reduce the uncertainty of using new university-developed technologies, thereby accelerating their adoption. Through a radical response to the difficulties of the current model, the public domain model provides an alternative reference point for considering other ownership models. Placing university inventions in the public domain might lead to better solutions compared with using the “perfect world” assumptions underlying most economic models.

[Al, “On Biological War”, Military Review, May-June, 2022, , pp. 28-36, accessed 8-20-2022, -BB]

China’s position as one of the leaders of the global bioeconomy increases its potential for realized or latent advanced biological warfare capabilities. Beijing appears committed to becoming a leader in biotechnology, which holds the promise of myriad public health applications. Yet, many biotechnology applications are dual-use, capable of delivering both public health benefits and advances in biological warfare capabilities. As one top U.S. expert noted, China “is pursuing a very aggressive strategy to become the world leader in biotechnology.”16 Sustained public and private investment in synthetic biology technologies needed for DNA sequencing and synthesis as well as gene editing have enabled China to develop a wide array of dual-use biotechnologies in the field of synthetic biology. Many experts anticipate that synthetic biology advances will enable the development of “new and novel biomaterials” to include advanced bioweapons.17 As a 2020 Brookings Institution study noted, “The determination of China’s one-party state to become a leading player in biotechnology is reflected by the rapid growth in investment in the sector. Some estimates claim that collectively, China’s central, local, and provincial governments have invested over $100 billion in life sciences research and development.”18 China’s sustained and sizeable government investment in domestic biotechnology has created an industrial base capable of developing and manufacturing a range of extant and novel biological warfare agents.

(Ruby Prosser, citing Jeff Ryan, lecturer in bioterrorism response and homeland security at Jacksonville State University, “Bioterrorism: how afraid should we really be?” The Medical Republic, August 17, ,)

However, Professor Ryan doubts that an individual or group is seriously working on that right now. This is because of how difficult it is to produce a large-scale viable bacterial or viral concoction that would be expertly disseminated, maintain its viability through the dissemination process, and manage to infect hundreds, if not thousands of people. “I think a lot of that is science fiction, rather than science fact. It takes a considerable amount of technology and resources and skills to be able to pull off something like that,” he says. Even the Rajneeshees, with all of their resources and a medical lab, weren’t able to pull off a particularly damaging attack. While it is possible for small-scale actors to launch a terrorist attack with something such as ricin or E. coli, Professor Ryan believes they would be better served using explosives or industrial chemicals that are readily available and don’t require such careful production. “I tend to think of the threat as a low-probability, high-consequence event,” he said. “It’s not likely to happen, but if it did, wow, it could be devastating.” For Professor Ryan, the technology needed to successfully pull off a major attack would require state actors. But this, he thinks, makes it unlikely in its own way. “A state-sponsored attack may be highly risky because of how the developed world would counter such an attack,” he says. “If somebody was to use biological weapons against the United States, and it was tracked to a state sponsored program or it was a direct act of war, we might retaliate with nukes.” That’s because while the US and other countries have given up their biological and chemical weapon stockpiles, they have made it clear that nuclear weapons may still be kept as a deterrent. There are also so many technological hurdles that a large, state-sponsored program and a small, rogue one alike would have to overcome. The reality of developing a sophisticated bioweapons program means that the creators will want to test their pathogens in nature to see how they survive and how they spread in the sun or wind, for example. “The reason why the plague, Yersinia pestis, was never really a good biological weapon is because it readily degrades in UV light,” Professor Ryan says. “Once the sun comes out, it starts to immediately degrade what you’ve deposited.” And while there have been spills from research centres that were detected, there is little evidence of new and interesting pathogens being found by surveillance systems, says Dr Martin Boland, a specialist in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. Alarm bells would ring if we found something that looked like Ebola turning up in Afghanistan, or something like SARS in Nigeria, Dr Boland says. Moreover, biological weapons are simply less reliable and more prone to blow back against your own citizens or soldiers compared with traditional explosives, even chemical and nuclear weapons. Any plan for Chinese military leaders to unleash SARS-CoV-2 on the world, as conspiracy theorists have suggested occurred, would have been simply too prone to failure, he says. There was no way for those military commanders to be certain that the US would so severely mismanage their response to the pandemic – in other circumstances, swifter action and more scientifically informed responses could have averted much of the destruction. “On a strategic or tactical level, using a biological weapon is so fraught with problems that no moderately sane military or political commander would use it,” Dr Boland adds.

(Nina, Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, and Halvard, Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, “Security implications of climate change: A decade of scientific progress,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 58, Iss. 1, 2021, pp. 3-17)

Research on climate and security has expanded significantly in recent years. Progress has been made in spatial and conceptual disaggregation, evaluation of plausible indirect pathways, identification of key scope conditions, and consideration of alternative insecurity outcomes through diverse methodological approaches. This special issue continues along these lines and addresses important research priorities identified in earlier reviews of the field. The contributions provide more evidence for significant climate impacts on social unrest in urban settings; they emphasize the complexity of the climate–migration– unrest link; they investigate how agricultural production patterns affect conflict risk; they study new outcomes, such as interstate claims and individual trust, that hitherto have received scant attention; and they explore the relevance of this research for user groups across academia and beyond. A red thread across these contributions is a nuanced, context-sensitive approach, further underlining that sweeping statements about climate– conflict relationships are neither helpful nor warranted.

(John, Environment editor at Ensia, “Is Climate Change Responsible for the Conflicts We’re Seeing Around the World Today?,” Ensia, 15 October 2019, https://ensia.com/features/climate-change-conflict-violence-extremism-draught-flood/,)

Today de Waal says there is no new evidence to directly link climate change and conflict.

In early 2019, newly elected twenty-nine-year-old congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sat down for an interview with a correspondent for The Atlantic. AOC, as she is known, made the case for a Green New Deal, one that would address poverty and social inequality in addition to climate change. AOC pushed back against critics who claimed it would be too expensive. “The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change,” she said, “and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?” 21

The next day, a reporter for the news website Axios called several climate scientists to get their reactions to AOC’s claim that the world was going to end in twelve years. “All the time-limited frames are bullshit,” said Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climate scientist. “Nothing special happens when the ‘carbon budget’ runs out or we pass whatever temperature target you care about, instead the costs of emissions steadily rise.”22

[Uma and Elizabeth, “Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being ” in “MAKING AMERICA A BETTER PLACE FOR ALL: SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION” edited by John C. Dernbach and Scott E. Schang, Environmental Law Institute, April, Lexis Nexus]

*SDG=Sustainable Development Goals

Some proposals have called for the U.S. to gear its patent system toward promoting environmental protection. One proposal creates a specific department for green patents that aims to fix certain shortcomings within the USPTO.109 As demonstrated in KRS International Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., the non-obvious requirement is strict and may inhibit innovation.110 Though the USPTO already covers patents for green technology, a specialized department could relax the non-obvious requirement for green patents, shorten the period of exclusivity, include a review from the EPA, and reconsider the requirement for novelty.111 The categories of patents within this sector may include increasing energy efficiency, replacing fossil fuels, capturing CO2, and other solutions.112 However, because such solutions would only impose slight modifications to current patent law, they would only promote incremental changes at best.113 Obtaining a patent is a lengthy process and the need to issue patents quickly is critical. In December 2009, the USPTO created a fast-tracking system for green technology patents called the “Green Technology Pilot Program.”114 With this program, an applicant was able to have their patent receive special examination if it pertained to an area of environmental protection such as GHG reduction.115 Rather than loosening doctrinal requirements for the patent, this proposed program addresses the urgency to get green patents issued. However, at the end of 2011, the USPTO announced that the program would be eliminated over the next few months.116 Today, the USPTO’s website directs applicants to other fast-tracking programs, although not specifically geared toward green technology.117 While loosening patent requirements, shortening the length of exclusivity, and speeding up the application process are important steps, these adjustments do not alleviate the Green Patent Paradox; the threat of patent infringement from an NPP would remain and continue to hinder the progress needed to create a high volume of green technology for an environmentally sustainable economy.

Climate change is a well-researched issue both scientifically and in terms of legal scholarship. It is widely recognized that technological solutions play an important role in climate mitigation and adaptation. Due to historical and practical reasons, relevant technologies are distributing unevenly across the world.1 To combat climate change, the wide and rapid diffusion of such technologies is in the global self-interest (Watal 2010: 14). There is evidence that technology transfers increase the incentives for participation in multinational environment agreements (MEAs) (Shephard 2007: 10548). In the context of climate change, the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC 1992) requires industrialized countries to facilitate technology transfers to developing countries to enable them to minimize their emissions of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). The 2015 Paris Agreement (Paris Agreement 2015) emphasizes this once more as it further commits the Parties to strengthening cooperation on climate technology. However, in reality, state-of-the-art climate mitigation and adaptation technologies are not being automatically transferred through business-as-usual practices where traditional legal protection of intellectual property (IP) operates under the Climate regime. In the light of the growing urgency of climate risks and damage and the emerging recognition of the potential violation of human rights, it is critical to examine what is the key bottleneck to technology transfer and how this can be addressed. Hence, this article explores how IP laws can be used by climate change policymakers in the post-Paris era to enhance technology transfer. To capture the entire picture, I use a statutory perspective to summarize and analyse the UNFCCC (see Sect. 2) and the WTO (see Sect. 3), the legal setting in which climate technology transfers operate, and explore possible solutions to situate IP in the context of climate change. In the context of climate change, technology transfer is predominantly regulated by the UNFCCC. Designed as a broad framework to comprehensively deal with the climate crisis, the UNFCCC has, since 1992, endeavoured to reduce GHG emissions through a range of solutions.2 As early as 1992, the UNFCCC shed light on technology as a solution by framing technology development and transfer as an essential international assistance tool. Two core articles were laid down to facilitate technology transfer: Article 4.5 and Article 4.7. Article 4.5 is cited as a classic clause and has been placed at the heart of the technology transfer commitment system.3 It obliges the developed country Parties of the UNFCCC (Annex I countries) to commit to technology transfer in order to fulfill the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. This principle aimed at substantive equity, international solidarity and assistance. To further confirm this commitment, Article 4.7, known as the conditionality clause, made the fulfilment of the developing countries’ commitments conditional on actions taken by developed countries.4 Under this Article, the developing country Parties could suspend the Convention’s implementation if the developed country Parties did not provide technology transfer and financial assistance. Therefore, it can be said that the conditionality clause makes technology transfer absolutely indispensable for the effective implementation of climate change agreements. A violation of the provisions on technology transfer might consequently constitute a material breach and would conflict with the purpose and objective of the Convention (Verhoosel 1998: 66).

In 2024, the green technology landscape will be marked by several groundbreaking innovations. One significant development is in the realm of solar energy, where advances have led to more efficient and affordable solar panels, making renewable energy from solar energy accessible to a broader audience. Another area of notable progress is in electric vehicle (EV) technology. EVs are becoming more mainstream, thanks to improvements in battery life and charging infrastructure. Waste management technologies are also transforming. Innovations in recycling and waste-to-energy processes are enabling more sustainable management of resources. These technologies have the potential to reduce landfill waste and greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, green architecture is gaining momentum, with sustainable buildings designed for energy efficiency and minimal environmental impact. These structures utilise sustainable materials and incorporate features like green roofs and energy-efficient lighting, contributing significantly to urban sustainability and lowering temperatures in adjacent areas. In the agricultural sector, sustainable farming technologies are evolving. Techniques like precision farming, which uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) for efficient resource usage, are revolutionising food production, making it more sustainable and less harmful to the environment. These examples illustrate the dynamic and impactful nature of green technologies. They are not just transforming industries but are also paving the way for a more sustainable and eco-friendly future. The continued evolution and adoption of these technologies will be crucial in addressing the global environmental challenges of our time.

[Josh, Ramana, 2020, “Venture Capital’s Role in Financing Innovation: What We Know and How Much We Still Need to Learn,” Journal of Economic Perspectives Jstor, p.244, vol.34, No.3, acc. 7-19-24, GDI-LI]

The growth of the venture capital market in the past decade should not blind us to its limitations as an engine of innovation. Indeed, the changes delineated in the previous section will likely exacerbate these challenges. We lay out three distinct areas of concern about venture capital and its ability to successfully spur innovations. While the discussion must be inherently more speculative, given the relatively [[TABLE OMMITTED]] limited work done in this area, we suggest that these questions would benefit from scholarly attention in the years to come.

[John E., III, 2013 Volume 38, Journal Technology Transfer, “Redeploying Bayh-Dole: beyond Merely doing good to optimizing the potential in results of taxpayer-funded research”, Springer - DOI 10.1007/s10961-011-9231-x, accessed on 7-16-2024, GDI-ALG]

2 Non-university factors in the advancing innovation ecosystem

[Lisa & Andrew, 12-25-19, Elsevier, “How do patent incentives affect university researchers?,” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144818819302522?via%3Dihub, 7-18-24, GDI – Tom Huynh]

Finally, in our study, the value of the patent, measured in a couple of ways, is not found to be related to university-ownership of the patent, which indicates that both the university and inventors do not discriminate between patents according to their expected value. This finding contradicts most of the studies on this effect but is in line with . One interviewee told that the university-owned patent that she filed was the least valuable one, and the more valuable ones were filed with her own company. Yet, there is not such a pattern in the patents analyzed for this study, or the pattern is too weak to find a significant result in our sample. An explanation might be that, at least in the years before and around the founding of the TTO, both academic inventors and the TTO might not have had experience in discerning patent value and making decisions based on such a value assessment. Studies that explore the effect of TTO in later years, or involve more universities, can further explore this issue.