Eco patent pool

Speaking of patents, there was this story the other day - Companies to Share Eco-Friendly Patents - WSJ.com:

Multinational companies including International Business Machines Corp., Sony Corp., Pitney Bowes Inc. and Nokia Corp. will unveil today what they call a patent-sharing plan for companies to donate intellectual property that improves the environment.

The project, dubbed the "Eco-Patent Commons," builds on the experience of the open-source software movement in which programmers around the world freely share their computer programs, said David Kappos, IBM's assistant general counsel for patent law, who helped design the system. He said that "the advantage of using this commons approach is efficiency, scale and visibility."

The commons will be administered by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a Geneva-based group that includes some 200 of the world's biggest companies.

Intellectual property rights to technology that solves environmental problems have been a contentious issue in negotiations over the Kyoto Protocol -- which attempts to combat global warming -- with U.S. negotiators resisting proposals to force companies to give away technology. John Coequyt, energy policy specialist with the Washington office of Greenpeace, an environmental group, said that the commons is "potentially a way to solve the problem by voluntary action."

Patent pools are a long standing and effective mechanism for spurring innovation. Almost ninety years ago, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt helped consolidate radio patents into a pool to further development of that technology, which was seen as critical during World War I. A report by the USPTO done in 2000 showed that patent pools could be especially helpful today in biotechnology.

There are a number of forms of patent pools (see Knowledge Ecology International - Survey of Patent Pools Demonstrates Variety of Purposes and Management Structures). Yet there is not a lot of discussion of patent pools as a tool of technology and innovation policy. There should be.

Maybe this latest pool will not only help facilitate eco-innovation, but also raise the profile of patent pools and cause others to think of expanding their uses in other industries.