Chasing Conflict? The National Relationship between Intellectual Property and Climate Change

Climate change has been recognised through international agreement, most recently the Paris Agreement, as a key problem of contemporary society. The protection of intellectual property has also been agreed at international level through the TRIPS agreement – and the contribution of intellectual property to meeting societal challenges is a key perennial argument made in its favour. Technology and its dissemination and sharing has been agreed to be one means of responding to climate change as can be seen from the United Nations Framework on Climate Change’s Technology Mechanism. Yet the fact that technologies may be the subject of intellectual property rights, held in private hands, receives limited attention in climate change negotiations and certainly in final form documents. And although this issues have been explored to an extent at an international level (Frankel, Youn, Grosse-Ruse Khan), there has been much less focus at national level - where the relationship between climate change, technology and intellectual property actually plays out.