The PTO is key for green tech transfer---they are actively engaged in climate mitigation.

The USPTO continues to prioritize the development of ecosystems that can unlock IP to create jobs and solutions by translating that IP to the market across sectors, including key technology areas such as healthcare, manufacturing, and climate resilience. The USPTO has built tech transfer into its 2022-2026 strategic plan, making it one of the five overarching goals driving the USPTO's work to “bring innovation to impact for the public good”.[2] As explained in the strategic plan, the USPTO is focused on driving innovation for long-term economic growth, supply chain resiliency, prosperity, and national security. Getting IP-protected goods and services into the hands of those who can benefit from them via the marketplace is a critical component of U.S. innovation, inclusive capitalism, and global competitiveness.

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We are expanding our efforts to help those pursuing IP protection identify available funding sources—public and private—to bring their innovations to impact for the public good. To further promote U.S. competitiveness and economic growth, we are partnering with other government agencies to provide IP education for federally funded innovators, and to strategize and explore the commercialization of innovation for job creation. We are advocating for policies that support the creation, protection, and enforcement of IP rights, domestically and abroad. As a leader in the global IP ecosystem, the USPTO is providing expertise to IP stakeholders to facilitate best practices. The USPTO is working closely with colleges and universities, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), as well as professionals and organizations focused on tech transfer, to explore ways in which the USPTO can collaborate with other agencies and with the private sector to improve and enhance the conversion of IP developed through research into impactful real-world solutions. The USPTO recognizes the need for tools that help connect IP rights owners with funders, so that IP can be realized in the marketplace. For example, during the recent pandemic, we launched an IP marketplace platform that connects the owners of COVID-19 related technologies with funders seeking to commercialize those types of solutions. The Patents 4 Partnerships platform is a voluntary listing of patents and patent application publications indicated as “available for licensing” on external public websites or in the USPTO Official Gazette Notices. It also includes links to sources that include the licensing information. The USPTO recognizes that it will take joint efforts across the entire innovation and commercialization ecosystem to optimally facilitate getting great ideas to impact. For that reason, the USPTO has been working across the U.S. government and with the private sector and universities—including through the USPTO's work with other agencies such as NOAA, NIST, and NSF, through its Council for Inclusive Innovation (CI[2] ) [3] and through the Economic Development Administration's Entrepreneurship [4] —on identifying challenges and opportunities related to innovation and commercialization. NIST plays a critical role in the facilitation of federal technology transfer by analyzing, planning, coordinating, reporting, and exercising general oversight of technology transfer responsibilities under section 5 of the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986 (15 U.S.C. 3710(g)) and Executive Order (E.O.) 12591 of April 10, 1987. NIST co-chairs the National Science and Technology Council's Lab-to-Market Subcommittee, which establishes goals, measures performance, streamlines administrative processes and facilitates local and regional partnerships to help foster a healthier environment for R&D commercialization. NIST also convenes the Interagency Working Group for Technology Transfer to identify and disseminate creative approaches to technology transfer from Federal laboratories, advises and assists on federal technology transfer studies, and identifies and coordinates responses to technology transfer policy issues through an interagency task force. NIST also acts as the host agency for the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC). The FLC is the nationwide network of federal laboratories that fosters commercialization, best practice strategies, and opportunities for accelerating federal technologies out of the labs and into the marketplace. II. Innovation and Tech Transfer for Green Technology

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In addition to its focus on tech transfer in general, the USPTO also recognizes the more specific and immediate need to accelerate the transfer of green technology and climate innovations to the marketplace. In January 2022, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a sister bureau within the Department of Commerce, reported that 2021 was the fourth warmest year on record for the United States, with 20 separate climate- and weather-related disasters costing over $1 billion each in the United States alone.[5] Last year, 2023, fared no better, registering as the hottest year on record for the planet.[6] 

That is why, under the Biden Administration, the USPTO has been focused on initiatives to incentivize the advancement and commercialization of climate innovations. In June 2022, the USPTO launched the Climate Change Mitigation Pilot Program,[7] which expedites initial examination of certain patent applications for innovations that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Qualifying patent applications are advanced out of turn (that is, granted special status) until first action on the merits by a patent examiner with no charge for the petition to make special. The program [8] supports President Biden's January 27, 2021 Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad [9] and ties directly into the administration's priority to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.[10] In June 2023, the USPTO extended and expanded the program to also include innovations that are designed to remove, prevent, and/or monitor greenhouse gas emissions.[11] 

The USPTO has also worked with innovators in the green tech space to promote the use of intellectual property to protect and commercialize innovations on major tech platforms in the U.S. and abroad.[12] As part of that work, the USPTO hosted its first ever Green Energy Innovation Expo [13] in May 2023, in collaboration with the Federal Laboratory Consortium and the Association of University Technology Managers The event facilitated partnerships between businesses and federal laboratories, universities, and private-sector innovators—including government-funded startups—offering a wide range of green energy technologies for licensing, including green hydrogen, energy storage, and wind energy.

To bring more green tech and climate innovation to impact, the USPTO is also engaging in several collaborative partnerships. In July 2022, the USPTO became a technology partner to the global green-technology platform of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), WIPO GREEN.[14] WIPO GREEN is a public-private partnership established by WIPO in 2013, with more than 145 international partners including major technology companies, intellectual property offices, business groups, research institutes, and nongovernmental organizations. The partnership provides an online platform for technology exchange, connecting providers and seekers of environmentally friendly technologies, and organizing acceleration projects, conferences, and international events that highlight the availability of green technologies.

The USPTO is also collaborating across government, including with the Department of Energy, the NSF, and NOAA to jointly promote the commercialization of green technologies. The USPTO engaged in a detail exchange program [15 16] with NOAA that focuses on the intersection of IP and climate and environmental technologies. USPTO expertise helps NOAA raise awareness and understanding of intellectual property concepts across its research workforce, to achieve a shared organizational understanding of the importance of IP. In return, NOAA is overseeing climate science training for USPTO patent examiners and advising the USPTO on future green initiatives. This collaboration is ongoing and has already resulted in positive outcomes, including a formal memorandum of understanding between USPTO and NOAA that defines areas for future work to encourage sustainable economic development while supporting climate and environmental stewardship.[17] 

Internationally, the USPTO hosted and led the 2023 annual meeting of the largest IP offices in the world—the European Patent Office, the Japan Patent Office, the Korean Intellectual Property Office, and the China National Intellectual Property Administration (collectively with USPTO referred to as the IP5)—along with WIPO, which focused on sustainability and green tech along with finding ways to work across the offices to bring more green tech innovations to market. The USPTO recently hosted a sustainable innovation dialogue 18 during which the offices discussed how we can work together towards a goal of net-zero carbon emissions to help mitigate climate change and preserve our environment. The IP5 leaders also shared information on initiatives that encourage patent filings in climate technologies in their countries, streamline examination, and encourage eco-friendly efforts, such as paperless filing and energy efficiency. The USPTO brought together innovators, accelerators, and funders, as well as NOAA, to determine how we can be a catalyst to bring climate change technologies from research to the marketplace.