Contribution to Book
Promethean Dreams: Intellectual Property and Climate Change in the Anthropocene
Climate Technology and Law in the Anthropocene
(2025)
Abstract
This essay will analyse the freewheeling debate over intellectual property, innovation policy, and climate change in the context of the geopolitics and international relations. There has been a spectrum of positions in the longstanding conflict over intellectual property and climate change (which stretches back to the development of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change 1992). Traditionally, developed nations (such as the USA, Japan, members of the European Union, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Australia) and industry groups have lobbied for the strong protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in respect of intellectual property rights. The BRICS/ BASIC group – China, India, Brazil, South Africa, and Russia – has called for greater technology transfer. Developing countries in the Group of 77 have expressed concern about the lack of progress on climate finance, and asked for further intellectual property flexibilities. Small island states, least developed countries, nations vulnerable to climate change, and climate justice activists have called for clean technologies to be treated as global public goods in the commons. This essay will consider whether the COP26, COP27 and COP28 climate summits overcame past procedural and substantive deadlocks in this field and achieved a new consensus on the topic of intellectual property and climate change. It will explore UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ call for renewable energy technologies to be treated as global public goods, free from intellectual property barriers and obstacles.
Keywords
- Intellectual Property,
- Climate Change,
- Anthropocene,
- Intellectual Property Litigation,
- Patent Law,
- Trade secrets,
- Intellectual Property Flexibilities,
- Global Public Goods,
- Renewable Energy,
- Clean Technologies,
- Environmentally Sound Technologies,
- commons
Disciplines
Publication Date
August, 2025
Editor
Alexander Zahar and Leonie Reins
Publisher
University of Bristol Press
Publisher Statement
Alexander Zahar and Leonie Reins (ed.), Climate Technology and Law in the Anthropocene, Bristol: University of Bristol Press, 2024/2025.
Citation Information
Work in Progress