Environment/BioEnergy Project

The Eco-Patent Commons represents a new World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) project. The mission is to manage a collection of patents pledged for unencumbered use by companies and intellectual property rights holders around the world to make it easier and faster to innovate and implement industrial processes that improve and protect the global environment.

Since the launch of the Eco-Patent Commons in January 2008, almost one hundred eco-friendly patents have been pledged by nine companies representing a variety of industries worldwide: Bosch, DuPont, IBM, Nokia, Pitney Bowes, Ricoh, Sony, Taisei, and Xerox (www.wbcsd.org, 2009). In parallel, stakeholders are discussing the idea of green licensing particularly for developing countries seeking green solutions to their environmental challenges. An alternative to exclusive geographic-based licensing that is currently being proposed is the establishment of an international licensing mechanism focused on green tech and clean tech. This would enable companies and governments in the developing world to use established technologies for a fee, while protecting innovator firms. The goal is to enable economies at different stages of development such as the US, China, and Bangladesh to afford to use the same licensed technologies to promote sustainability and cleaner production (Greenwood, 2009).

The goal of the environment project is to track the development of such commons targeting the environment sector.

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