My new article came out in Volume 13 of the Fordham Environmental Law Review titled Climate Change, Technology Transfer, And Intellectual Property: A ‘Modest Proposal’ For An IP Enforcement Moratorium.
Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/elr/vol31/iss1/1
The basic thesis is:
In the absence of proactive policies, insufficient technology transfer to address climate change, at the necessary timescales, will take place under existing international market conditions. Fear of losing control over intellectual property rights (IPRs) by private actors, as well as the fact that IPRs can lead to prices above the socially optimal level, means that technology development and diffusion to address climate change, at the required pace and at the required scale, is unlikely to happen without significant policy interventions. While many of the policies that developing countries wish to pursue are available as a legal matter, they are not available at sufficient scale and scope to achieve the kind of sector-wide effects required to address climate change, even when operating in the aggregate. This limiting effect is a deliberate rather than accidental outcome of the TRIPS Agreement, which aimed to reduce state interventions against IPR rightholders to a relatively small set of cases on the margins and to limit the use of tools best suited to enabling industrial policy level measures. This article, building on previous work, proposes a temporary moratorium on IP enforcement to provide breathing space to address climate change.
Enjoy!
Technology, Sustainability & Human Rights 