Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Hall, Bronwyn
Author-Email: bhall@merit.unu.edu
Author-Workplace-Name: University of California at Berkeley, UNU-MERIT,
	 and Maastricht University
Author-Name: Helmers, Christian 
Author-Email: c.r.helmers@lse.ac.uk
Author-Workplace-Name: CEP, London School of Economics and Political Science,
	 and CSAE, University of Oxford
Title: The role of patent protection in (clean/green) technology transfer  
Abstract: Global climate change mitigation will require the development and 
	 diffusion of a large number and variety of new technologies. How will 
	 patent protection affect this process? In this paper we first review the 
	 evidence on the role of patents for innovation and international 
	 technology transfer in general. The literature suggests that patent 
	 protection in a host country encourages technology transfer to that 
	 country but that its impact on innovation and development is much more 
	 ambiguous. We then discuss the implications of these findings and other 
	 technology-specific evidence for the diffusion of climate change-related 
	 technologies. We conclude that the "gdouble externality" problem, that 
	 is the presence of both environmental and knowledge externalities, 
	 implies that IP may not be the ideal and cannot be the only policy 
	 instrument to encourage innovation in this area and that the range and 
	 variety of green technologies as well as the need for local adaptation 
	 of technologies means that patent protection may be neither available 
	 nor useful in some settings. 
Classification-JEL: O19, O33, O34, Q54, Q55, Q58
Keywords: climate change, intellectual property, innovation, technology transfer
Series: UNU-MERIT Working Papers
Creation-Date: 2010
Number: 046
File-URL: http://www.merit.unu.edu/publications/wppdf/2010/wp2010-046.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
File-Size: 275 Kb
Handle: RePEc:unm:unumer:2010046