David Hirschmann, president and CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce’s Global IP Centre, launched the Innovation, Development, and Employment Alliance (IDEA), on Wednesday in Washington DC.
Its members include General Electric, Microsoft, Sunrise Solar and Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems.
The Alliance is worried that developing countries might issue compulsory licences over the IP rights behind medicines and green technologies at the expense of those companies that develop them.
It says its members plan to communicate the role of innovation in developing “breakthrough solutions to global challenges”, lobby government to support the IP system, oppose efforts to weaken IP rights at multilateral or norms-setting forums, and work on solutions for what it calls “critical access to technology issues” in the developing world.
Caroline Joiner, vice-president of the Chamber’s Global IP Centre, wrote on the Chamber’s website last week that “real threats” to IP owners’ ability to create and disseminate technology have emerged as governments and NGOs around the world consider ways to improve access to healthcare, develop renewable energy and tackle climate change.
“Some governments and special interest groups have begun to promote policies that weaken existing marketplace protections as a means to access protected technologies without fairly compensating the rights holder,” she said.
The Alliance was launched less than a week after the organisers of the UN Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen in December released a first draft of an agreement.
This negotiating document, which will be discussed at UN climate change talks in Bonn next month, includes a series of proposed measures for dealing with IP rights in what it calls “climate-friendly technologies”. These range from compulsory licensing for specific patented technologies to exempting least developed countries from patent protection of climate-related technologies.
Subscribers can read more about the issues behind the patenting of green technologies in the September 2008 issue of Managing IP.
