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Patent Lies
Who Says Saving the Planet Has to Cost a Fortune?
By Juliane von Reppert-Bismarck in Brussels
Many of the technologies in place today that can help slow climate change are already in the public domain.
When the host of a party predicts a flop, it rarely inspires much confidence in a good bash. With just over a month to go before international climate talks start in Copenhagen the Danish government has done exactly that: Don't hold your breath, it said, it's unlikely there will be a binding global deal. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso had even stronger words earlier this week: "Of course we are not going to have a full-fledged binding treaty, Kyoto-type, by Copenhagen. There is not time for that."
Need It Be that Expensive?
David E. Martin is travelling the globe to prove negotiators wrong about the cost of battling climate change. He's not making himself very popular. It's not that the 42-year-old patent expert denies global warming. It's that he says designs for green gadgets, from hybrid cars to wind turbines, are now in the public domain and freely available -- if you know how to find them. As executive chairman of innovation finance firm M-CAM, Martin has made it his life's mission to make sure an increasing number of people, companies and countries have access to this information. Most recently, in collaboration with the World Bank's Information for Development Program, he launched an online database of gadgets whose lapsed patents in advanced energy, water and agricultural technologies represent potential license savings worth, according to the World Bank, more than $2 trillion.
To big business, Martin is a nuisance because he questions the very validity of some of the vast profits expected from a new climate deal. To governments, his truth is inconvenient because it threatens a delicate relationship with corporate giants they want backing their climate goals. For Martin, it's a continuation of his interest in what he calls linguistic genomics - the study of how the meaning of words shifts and changes, and how this can be used to obscure meaning and gain an advantage. Patents, he says, keep getting issued because even though they cover the same ground, they're worded in different ways. So car brakes that charge an electric car become a "regenerative brake device having a driving wheel, an electric motor and a battery," or a wind turbine becomes "a power house and vanes rotating in the wind." The more complicated the wording, the more likely that a patent will be granted. Indeed, it can take a patent expert up to three days to assess two three-page patents for overlapping claims.
Trawling Patents
Martin first grappled with the many meanings of words when he was five years old. Back then, in southern California, he huddled over the family kitchen table with his mother and three brothers, translating ancient Greek into a version of the English Bible that is now in its fourth edition. Thirty-odd years and several natural disasters later, he is trawling environmental patents for double meanings, just as he once trawled religious texts. As he sought to do with his childhood Bible text, he is trying to shed light on weighty issues -- only this time it is not about the foundations of faith, but about how much developing countries from China to Tanzania should have to pay in the fight against global warming. His custom-made software and a vast server are programmed to trawl and compare hundreds of thousands of files containing patent information from what would seem an incongruous list of places: Papua New Guinea, Berlin, the Brazilian rainforest, New York. Some of these patents are new; others have expired. What Martin -- and those who work with him at M-CAM -- say they found is that one in three patents registered today on energy-saving technology duplicate gadgets that were first dreamed up in the wake of the 1970s oil crisis and are now freely available.
With his unpopular data and promotion of free technology that is legally available in the effort to slow global warming, Martin's work tracking illegal patent claims has made him an army of foes among big business, patent examiners and even climate negotiators. "I've lost count how many times people have threatened to hurt me and my family," Martin told SPIEGEL ONLINE in a phone interview. "It's because I'm talking about a truth that is inconvenient."
That hasn't stopped him. He has testified before the US Congress and butted heads with patent offices worldwide. He is contributing to the emerging drive by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation and members of the European Parliament to make this truth known. His clients include the US Treasury and Commerce Departments and his work inspired the Swedish activist project The Patent Bay, which analyzes the validity of patents in Europe to promote innovation.
Yet negotiators still largely hold on to the sense that patent licenses are fundamental to encouraging green innovation. To avoid hostile debate, climate negotiators hope to use part of the €50 billion for payments to patent holders, even if their patents may be redundant.
Politicians Keep Corporations Sweet
Lees verder: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,628606,00.html
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