Representatives from the Eco-Patent Commons defended the scheme against sceptics last month at the 41st Congress of the Association Internationale pour la Protection de la Propriété Intellectuelle (AIPPI). Housed at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the initiative is spearheaded by long-term sustainable innovations expert, George Weyerhaeuser, and aims to pool green patents for free distribution to anyone who wishes to use them. In a Q&A session, some delegates said the scheme lacked substance, claiming that the companies which had registered were not pledging their 'bread and butter' IP.

Nokia IP director, Donal O'Connell, said: 'It is up to each company in the Eco-Patent Commons as to which patents they pledge … they must have held some value to us, otherwise we would not have patented them in the first place.' O'Connell pointed out that the initiative had more than doubled its number of pledged patents since it was formed in January, and that more organisations were expressing their interest in the scheme all the time. His comments were echoed by IBM assistant general counsel, Dave Kappos. While Kappos admitted that the Commons was not a cure-all for world hunger, he stressed that the initiative was finding out 'how IP Rights can drive innovation' in the green creative space.

A week before the congress, the WBCSD announced that the Commons had acquired a range of patents from three distinguished new corporate partners. The innovations are significant for having day-to-day applications for farming and transport – two major areas of environmental concern. Technology giant, Xerox, pledged a system from reducing the time and cost of removing hazardous waste from water and soil. Agriculture specialist, DuPont, offered a method of converting non-recyclable plastics into fertilizer. And hardware manufacturer, Bosch, added several automotive technologies designed to lower fuel consumption and emissions, and conserve waste heat from vehicles for use as an energy source.

IP Review Online asked Govind Kedia, patent analyst with leading IP corporation, CPA, to comment on the initiative. Working from CPA's Delhi knowledge base, his team – led by Rahul Jindhal – have studied green patents as a means of informing the company's multinational clients of the sector's commercial feasibility. 'We believe that this is a great initiative and certainly a right step towards a sustainable future,' said Govind. 'The formation of patent pools that enable development of technologies related to electronic waste reduction; development of paper alternatives; making pollutants biodegradable, and so on, will help the rapid adoption of such technologies, since patent pools usually lead to easy and reasonable commercialisation of the technologies involved. Deployment of clean technology is becoming a policy matter –influenced by brand image or otherwise – in several corporations. It will be interesting to see how commoditisation of environmental concerns will help the world in achieving a clean and green future.

'We witnessed patent pools in the development of various telecommunication standards,' Govind added. 'This practice has so far been fruitful, with corporations able to develop innovative technologies while ensuring that reasonable benefits flow to the inventors.'

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