Promoting Environmental Innovation with Intellectual Property Innovation: A New Basis for Patent Rewards

Abstract

Despite numerous and diverse efforts, environmental law generally fails to promote technological innovation with environmental benefits. Such innovation could have myriad human health and environmental benefits, while simultaneously reducing the cost of environmental protection for industry and society. This Article explores whether intellectual property law can step in where environmental law has failed to efficiently provide greater incentives for environmental innovation. A patent rewards system for environmental innovation holds substantial promise. Because environmental innovation often produces significant positive externalities by reducing environmental harms for many individuals beyond the implementing firm, inventors do not face efficient incentives for environmental innovation - a market failure that patent rewards can ameliorate. Along these lines, the analysis reveals a previously unrecognized benefit of patent rewards in certain circumstances.