One of these lies in the way the world manages the creation and ownership of inventions and concepts. A protectionist approach to intellectual property is made to protect and prolong the lifecycle of existing technologies, and enable How Do You Get A Patent to capture the profits from their creations. In a paper published with colleagues from universities in Germany and India, we examined how this also makes it more difficult for new and much more sustainable technologies to be developed and adopted. That explains why there are now other approaches being used to move key sectors to more sustainable systems and end this status quo.
Electric car manufacturer Tesla, has become doing that. Tesla CEO Elon Musk “shocked” the planet in 2014 as he announced that his company was joining the open source movement and handing out its patents free of charge. You should be aware of the rationale here. Why would an organization that had worked so hard to build up and protect its technology looking at the global car manufacturer competitors suddenly give its technology away for free?
Tesla initially developed a patent portfolio to guard its technology. However, Tesla’s concern that it would be overwhelmed once established car makers ramped up their production of electric cars never got to pass. Instead, it saw the electric car market stagnate at lower than 1% of total vehicle sales. So Tesla changed its strategy from trying to prevent others from building electric cars to seeking to encourage them in to the market.
Portion of the reasoning here is that if more electric cars are made, then more battery recharging stations will be built too. This might make electric cars become more visible, along with a more conventional choice. Tesla believes that the open intellectual property strategy can strengthen as opposed to diminish its position by building the size of the electrical car market, and consequently, build their own share from the total automotive market.
This sort of careful management of intellectual property at company level, backed up by policy-level awareness, can be a powerful way to secure the same kinds of transitions to more sustainable technologies in other industries too.
Energy supply faces an array of difficulties: the depletion of natural resources; air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions; nuclear risks; and security of supply. Water supply sector is restricted by water scarcity, pollutants, extreme environmental events including flooding and costs associated with supplying water to communities in poor countries and remote communities. The agri-food sector, meanwhile, is under pressure to sustainably produce more food and to address malnutrition in poor countries.
For these industries to navigate a path around these problems, new knowledge as well as the Inventhelp Corporate Headquarters that follow will likely be essential. As well as in knowledge economies, intellectual property can either be an enabler or an inhibitor.
If the ownership of intellectual property is fragmented in an industry, it may decrease technology innovation and uptake, such as inside the electronics industry where multiple players own complementary patents. However, firms can instead open up their innovation processes and depart from jealously guarded, internal cultures, where intellectual property is rtaotl to safeguard and prolong lifecycles. This change may see knowledge sharing leading to accelerated Inventhelp Success Stories and a more rapid uptake of sustainable alternatives throughout a sector: exactly what Tesla was hoping for in electric vehicles.
This method to intellectual property, so-called “open IP”, is well advanced and mature inside the software industry and healthcare. It has given use of life-saving medicines to huge numbers of people, especially in developing countries through patent pools, such as the Medicine Patent Pool. This type of project relies upon multinational pharmaceutical companies sharing their intellectual property, but small companies can also play a strategic roles in creating these new, more sustainable systems, and it’s not every about open IP.