Patent Lies: Who Says Saving the Planet Has to Cost a Fortune?

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With Copenhagen's success in the balance, some experts now hope bilateral and national agreements will improve on the tricky issues Copenhagen will avoid: Within the EU an agreement on sharing technology for carbon sequestration is emerging, and Washington and Beijing are rumored to be discussing a technology agreement.

But on patents, the crucial question will continue to center on whether a boom in new patents harms or promotes innovation. Rather than saving the planet, such an onslaught of new patents will hinder green innovation, argues Bruno van Pottelsberghe, a Belgian university professor and senior fellow at Brussels-based think tank Bruegel who has been calling for an overhaul of the world's creaking patent system.

"The danger is clear -- if you give a patent for something that already exists, it reduces the speed of innovation," he told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "You allow patent holders to block a technological field. You give them power that they would not deserve."

It's an attitude that Martin calls "wilful ignorance" -- leading to big firms being paid vast license fees. Understaffed patent offices dealing with hundreds of thousands of applications, and fear of costly legal disputes, compound the problem. In many cases it is easier for a patent office to grant a patent and for a company to pay a license fee rather than take on an industrial giant: A row between General Electric and Germany's Enercon, for instance, over a disputed wind turbine patent some years ago ended in Enercon agreeing to a settlement and GE charging fees for a patent whose validity experts still question. Other green patent disputes and appeals are lining up, with a US trade panel currently reviewing a ruling that would keep wind turbines made by Japan's Mitsubishi off the US market at GE's request.

Yet much powerful support for new patents still rests on the assumption that they encourage innovation, even if they are redundant.

"Sometimes patents are not worth what they claim they are in terms of innovation," Gerard Giroud, the recently retired international affairs director of the European Patent Office, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "But it seems to me a detail. Patent offices should grant patents to encourage investment in a particular type of technology -- because that investment is what will save the planet."

'What Belongs to the Big Guys and What Belongs to Society'

Europe's institutions seem to have pledged support for green IPR protection. Even environmental groups seem to agree money paid to big business in licenses -- even if these are questionable -- could be crucial in pushing toward a climate deal in December.

"A failure to constructively tackle IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) … will limit the pace of innovation… and potentially poison the international climate negotiations," a summer report by environmental action group E3G and London's independent Chatham House think tank states.

To Martin, shedding light on redundant patents and license fees is as important as questioning any accepted world order, just as he did as a young man translating Greek Bible text.

"What we do is trawl documents for their true meaning," he says. "But what we care about are basic human issues. In this case, it's to show up what belongs to the big guys and what belongs to society."

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• Part 1: Who Says Saving the Planet Has to Cost a Fortune?
• Part 2: A Chicken and Egg Question over Patents and Technology