Patent law has a dirty history. A legal mechanism refined in the industrial revolution, patent law has sought to encourage manufacturing and industry – the ‘Progress of Science and the Useful Arts’. Patent law has provided incentives for research and development for a wide range of polluting technologies, such as oil, coal, gas.

The world’s largest oilfield service providers have built upon a large portfolio of patents to protect their research and development. Baker Hughes obtained 138 patents in 2012 and 368 patents in 2013. Schlumberger’s patents rose to 588 in 2013 from 235 in 2012. Halliburton’s patents rose to 301 in 2013.

Halliburton was awarded more than $35 million in damages after winning a federal trial in Dallas in February 2012 against Weatherford International Ltd. over a patented tool used in well bores.

The major fossil fuel companies – Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and ConocoPhilips – have also built large portfolios of intellectual property, relying upon patent law, trade mark law, and trade secrets.

There have also been efforts to patent new techniques and strategies in respect of ‘fracking’ – hydraulic fracturing. Daniel Cahoy and his colleagues argue that Fracking Patents have emerged as a means of Information Containment.

Increasingly, environmental groups and climate activists have challenged investments in fossil fuels.

Bill McKibbin of 350.org has emphasized that oil, coal, and gas companies are radicals because ‘they’re willing to alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere to make money.’ He maintained that such companies should lose their social license and respectability: ‘If it is wrong to wreck the climate, then it is wrong to profit from that wreckage’.

Accordingly, 350.org has organised a fossil fuel divestment movement. The organisation has encouraged university and educational institutions to divest themselves of fossil fuel stocks. Cities such as Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco have pushed ahead with fossil fuel divestment policies in relation to city pension funds. Superannuation funds and sovereign funds have been encouraged to engage socially responsible investment.

It is only a matter of time before environmental and climate activists challenge the validity of fossil fuel investments in respect of intellectual property.