Six countries dominate clean energy patents, UN-backed study finds

Japan still benefiting from staying with PV when the US (and everyone else)
abandoned it in the Carter years. Other than that, we are still cranking
pretty well on the innovation scale.

http://www.electroiq.com/index/display/pv-wire-news-display/1274048013.html

Six countries dominate clean energy patents, UN-backed study findsM2
PressWIREOctober 1, 2010 September 30, 2010 Innovations in clean energy
technologies are concentrated in six countries - Japan, the United States,
Germany, the Republic of Korea (ROK), France and the United Kingdom -
according to a new United Nations-backed study.The study, jointly produced
by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the European Patent Office (EPO) and
the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD),
found that the six nations, led by Japan, hold nearly 80 per cent of all
patents in the field of clean energy. It looked into some 400,000 patent
documents and aimed to examine the effect of patents on the worldwide
transfer of such technologies, including solar photovoltaic, geothermal,
wind and carbon capture. The report also contains the first-ever survey on
licensing practices in the clean energy arena. "Far from being a drag on
economies and innovation, international efforts to combat climate change
have sparked technological creativity on low-carbon, resource-efficient
Green Economy solutions," said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner. "The
challenge now is to find ways in which these advances can be diffused,
spread and transferred everywhere so that the benefits to both economies and
the climate are shared by the many rather than the few." Patentis and clean
energy: bridging the gap between evidence and policy found that patent
activity surged with the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, showing
that political decisions can be crucial in stimulating the development of
technologies considered to be crucial in confront climate change. Patenting
rates in several clean energy technologies have grown 20 per cent annually
since then, outpacing traditional energy sources of fossil fuels and nuclear
energy, the study said. It also found that there is limited licensing
activity in developing countries, but 70 per cent of survey respondents said
they are prepared to offer more flexible terms when licensing in poorer
nations. Copyright 2010 Normans Media LimitedAll Rights Reserved M2
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