Owning our energy future: patents, crisis innovation, and the war on climate change

Thesis

This thesis begins with a puzzle: despite the mixed available evidence, legal scholars express concern that patents may impede the dissemination of climate-friendly technologies. In parallel, climate change has reignited interest in ‘mission-oriented’ industrial policies associated with the Manhattan Project. These twin lines of enquiry have sparked a confrontation between dirigisme and the market logics underpinning the patent system. This project tackles this dialogue head-on, investigating whether patents impede the diffusion of climate-friendly technologies, and if so, whether patent protection should be weakened. Its starting contention is that the climate emergency is unlike the acute circumstances of war or pandemics. Whereas acute crises give rise to dirigisme and the weakening of intellectual property rights, the climate emergency is chronic: it is persistently underappreciated and diffuse. Government intervention is necessary but weakening patent protection may not promote the diffusion of climate- friendly technologies.

This thesis examines how patents impact the diffusion of renewable energy technologies through 41 interviews with start-up entrepreneurs, investors, and experts. It finds that entrepreneurs use patent signalling to attract investment and sell their technologies to incumbents. However, market demand is low, commercialisation is capital-intensive, and strategic patent accumulation and secrecy are widespread. These factors suggest patents are a double-edged sword with complex and industry-specific effects.

This study’s central argument is that intellectual property rights should be tailored to divide risks and rewards between public and private actors in a mission- oriented, climate-friendly industrial strategy replicating the exigency of acute crises. State intervention may galvanise urgency to overcome the climate emergency from a state of chronic inaction to acute action. Governments should emulate wartime mission-oriented research, using intellectual property rights to impose conditions on private actors in public contracts. The state creates rather than reacts to urgency, and history underlines the efficacy of public-private collaborations for innovation in a crisis.

Authors: Ring, C

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-jxzzzgnd4
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: patent; mission-oriented innovation; climate change; innovation; intellectual property; renewable energy
• Subjects: Climate change mitigation; Law; Intellectual property