Earth Day Network is a driving force steering environmental awareness around the world. Founded by the organizers of the first April 22 Earth Day in 1970, Earth Day Network promotes environmental citizenship and year round progressive action worldwide. Through Earth Day Network, activists connect change in local, national, and global policies. Earth Day Network’s international network reaches over 17,000 organizations in 174 countries, while the domestic program engages 5,000 groups and over 25,000 educators coordinating millions of community development and environmental protection activities throughout the year. Earth Day is the only event celebrated simultaneously around the globe by people of all backgrounds, faiths and nationalities. More than a half billion people participate in Earth Day Network campaigns every year.

Earth Day seems as good a day as any to note the contributions of leading corporations that have joined together in partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to make their patents available for the common good.

Eco-Patent Commons, launched by IBM, Nokia, Pitney Bowes and Sony in partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), was founded on the commitment that anyone who wants to bring environmental benefits to market can use these patents to protect the environment and enable collaboration between businesses that foster new innovations.

Since the launch of the Eco-Patent Commons in January 2008, almost a hundred eco-friendly patents have been pledged by nine companies representing a variety of industries worldwide: Bosch, DuPont, IBM, Nokia, Pitney Bowes, Ricoh, Sony, Taisei and Xerox.

We hope more companies join in the Eco-Patent Commons and that this important initiative expands beyond patents to include technical disclosures of innovations that would be helpful to the environment and the future of planet earth, making every day "earth day."

Whether or not you agree with her argument about issued patents, her idea of adding invention disclosures to the Commons would almost certainly benefit the initiative and its participants by increasing the value and utility of the available green technology. Of course, no independent or targeted donations to the Commons would be necessary because enabled invention disclosures are by definition in the public domain and available to everyone. Instead, to make the technology available to greentech firms, it would just need to be made accessible via the Commons. Broadly, Cronin’s idea could be implemented in one of three ways. Either companies who publish environmentally-beneficial technology in these disclosures could provide the publication information or citations to the Commons, the Commons itself could monitor the disclosure publications, or the publications could alert the Commons of relevant published disclosures. However it’s done, I can’t argue with increasing green idea and technology sharing.

US patent law is somewhat more restrictive in its definition of state of the art by excluding from patentability only those inventions that were “known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent” (US Patent Act, Section 102a). Public use in Europe would thus not be sufficient to establish prior art in the US. In addition, use or description of the invention must have taken place before the invention by the applicant or, as Section 102.b specifies, one year or more before filing of the application. This “first-to-invent” rule has an ambiguous effect on the attractiveness of defensive publishing. On the one hand, a DP may not pre-empt a patent application if the latter is filed less than 12 months after the DP and if it claims an earlier date of invention. In such a case, a DP might even trigger a competitor’s patent application. On the other hand, a DP can help to establish priority for an inventor, who maintains the option to file for a patent within the following year.

To compensate for these drawbacks and make the Eco-Patent Commons as useful and powerful as it can be, the initiative requires expansion to offer truly recent inventions that have not spent years in the patent application process. This involves widening the scope of the initiative to include non-patented inventions that have yet to be marketed and made public.

One way to make these inventions available is through enabled invention disclosures. An enabled invention disclosure (also called “defensive publication” or “technical bulletin”) is a written description of an invention that ideally has the same degree of detail as an issued patent. Therefore a well-written invention disclosure provides sufficient information to the reader to understand and use the invention.

Many companies successfully use enabled invention disclosures as part of their intellectual property (IP) strategies. Companies frequently have inventions that they do not wish to patent because the patent process is so expensive, including invention development costs, legal preparation and patent prosecution fees. However, companies also wish to prevent competitors from patenting those same inventions.

By using enabled invention disclosures to publish the invention, companies accomplish both goals: they save the cost of patenting but they also establish a “prior art bar” to obtaining the patent and make it impossible for competitors to claim it the invention as their own. Several Web site forums exist for publishing inventions, including ip.com and www.researchdisclosure.com.

The Eco-Patent Commons should be expanded to include these enabled invention disclosures. Many inventions that companies deem non-strategic for patent application and instead decide to publish may be excellent candidates to be donated to the Eco-Patent Commons. These published inventions would be truly new, fresh and useful -- a good first step to creating the true springboard for green innovation that the Eco-Patent Commons was meant to be.

They will be joined by Cisco's Sue Bostrom, EVP, Chief Marketing Officer, in a Cisco TelePresence session before a live audience at VoiceCon to examine the critical role that technology and innovation can play in mitigating climate change. Some topics they will cover include: the latest observations of the effects of global warming and the impact of information technology; how businesses can reduce greenhouse gas emissions through innovation; and, how the technology industry can help create the most sustainable model for addressing global climate change.

Organisations that wish to grow profitably in the future must focus their efforts to benefit shareholders, society and the environment simultaneously. Concentrating on any one of these areas at the expense of the other two may compromise a business's long-term success. A focus on sustainability provides the best means to implement this triple-pronged strategy simultaneously, enabling organisations to innovate, differentiate themselves and succeed.

9. Join the networks
A growing number of organisations, networks and other bodies dedicated to encouraging sustainable business are emerging. Get involved with groups such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the UN Global Compact, the International Business Leaders Forum and similar local bodies. Take part in sustainability investment rankings and monitors such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes and the Corporate Responsibility Index.

With the launch of the Eco-Patent Commons earlier this week, four companies -- IBM, Nokia, Pitney-Bowes and Sony -- joined with the World Business Council on Sustainable Development to do something almost unprecedented: they agreed to relinquish their control over inventions that could benefit the planet in order to spur innovation for the greater good.

Wayne Balta: The Eco-Patent Commons is a first of its kind initiative under which we at IBM and some other like-minded companies are partnering with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to create a place where patents related to the environment can be pledged by the patent holder so that others around the world can access them and use them free of charge.

The basic premise here is that in the environmental arena, sharing knowledge and technology has the great potential to better address the world's problems. That there exists no organized way today to do this on a global basis. That leading businesses may hold patents that are not an essential source of business income to them. And that by sharing them with others on a global basis, both developed and developing countries, it can help people develop in a more sustainable way. And for those who pledge the patents it might also need to lead to new opportunities for innovation and collaboration with others, whom you might not otherwise reach.

...you know, pledging patents for free use by others is not necessarily a common way companies think about their portfolio of intellectual property and we at IBM recognize that. Now, we at IBM probably have as much or more experience as anyone with this because we have also done prior patent pledges. So we recognize that as we've spoken to others about the idea that it isn't something that you're innately thinking of doing. But as people think through the best use of some of this IP and the opportunities that could come out of a commons like the one we're creating, many have realized and others I believe will realize that it can be a win-win situation.

It can be a win for innovators in other parts of the world, who might look at these ideas and further them and use them as the basis of additional solutions. And it can be a win for those who pledge because it could open up opportunities to collaborate with people that you might not otherwise have collaborated with.

Donal O’Connell, Director of Intellectual Property, Nokia, said, “Environmental issues have great potential to help us discover the next wave of innovation because they force us all to think differently about how we make, consume and recycle products. From Nokia we have pledged a patent designed to help companies safely re-use old mobile phones by transforming them into new products like digital cameras, data monitoring devices or other electronic items. Recycling the computing power of mobile phones in this way could significantly increase the reuse of materials in the electronics industry.”


Angelo Chaclas, Vice President & Deputy General Counsel, Intellectual Property and Technology Law at Pitney Bowes, said, “The Eco-Patent Commons offers an effective framework to develop and make available technology that helps combat climate change and reduce the release of carbon dioxide. Our objective for the Eco-Patent Commons is to promote the spread of environmentally conscious technologies that make conservation and preservation a priority.”


Hidemi Tomita, General Manager of Sony Corporation’s Corporate Social Responsibility Department, said, “To more effectively protect the environment, it is time for business to join efforts rather than tackling the issue alone. We truly believe this joint effort with our peers will mark a significant step and help transfer innovative ideas and technologies across industries and beyond to developing countries. We are excited to launch this platform to share technologies that will bring about positive changes in the environment.”