The Eco-Patent Commons is an initiative to create a collection of patents that directly or indirectly protect the environment. The patents will be pledged by companies and other intellectual property rights holders and made available to anyone, free of charge. The Commons is a resource for connecting those who have had success with a particular challenge in a way that benefits the environment and those who are facing similar challenges.

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.

Thus begins the transcript of a very interesting podcast interview with IBM's Vice President of Environmental Affairs, Wayne Balta, on GreenBiz Radio.

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.

In a joint press release, other member companies of the Eco-Patent Commons today issued the following statements:

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.”

These ideas are exemplary of a new wave of thinking described in a recent blog post on Open Innovators. "Companies need to get a lot better at bringing external ideas and knowledge in from the outside, while at the same time allowing internal ideas not being used to flow outside the organization."

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) is a CEO-led, global association of some 200 companies dealing exclusively with business and sustainable development. The Council provides a platform for companies to explore sustainable development, share knowledge, experiences and best practices, and to advocate business positions on these issues in a variety of forums, working with governments, non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations. Members are drawn from more than 35 countries and 20 major industrial sectors.

Get the FAQs and download the Brochure of the Eco-Patent Commons in pdf here.

At IP.com Inc., we'd like to get involved in support of the Eco-Patent Commons project to expand this initiative to include the sharing of innovative ideas and technologies that directly or indirectly protect the environment, which have not yet been patented but are otherwise in the prior art and knowledge of the member corporations, the scientific community, and academia.

IP.com's Prior Art Database technology could be made readily available, free of charge, as a customized repository of  global innovation in support of the Eco-Patents Commons. How amazing would that be?

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Make no mistake about it, our company IP.com Inc. has nothing to do with a German IP licensing company IPCom GmbH & Co. KG that is demanding billions in patent licensing fees from Nokia.

Patent Troll Tracker blogged about the news of this massive lawsuit, reported by Heise Online as follows:

IPcom, an exploiter of patents based in Pullach, near Munich, is demanding 12 billion euros from the Finnish group Nokia for use of mobile telephony patents, reports Handelsblatt. IPCom is said to have lodged a complaint with the Land Court in Mannheim in early January, aimed at prohibiting Nokia's use of eight patent families. That would mean a ban on sales in a large number of countries, though what particular patents are involved is not yet clear.

The IPCom boss, Christoph Schoeller, said negotiations on the licensing of the patents had been going on for a long time, and now his firm's patience was at an end. The Nokia group is reported to be rejecting the claims, asserting that some of the patents are invalid and the fees being claimed are excessive.

News of this multi-billion dollar lawsuit against Nokia by the German-based company, which press reports sometimes refer to as simply IPCom or IP-Com, provoked commentary in The Motley Fool article headlined Have Patent, Will Sue:

No one expects reforms to happen overnight. Particularly when the U.S. government and the entire tech industry deal with the tangled nuances of patent law, positive changes in the system will naturally be slow in coming.

But in the meantime, companies continue to use and abuse patent rights to go after competitors -- or after any entity with deep enough pockets. While many of the industry's larger players, such as Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) and Broadcom (Nasdaq: BRCM), are tangled in more legitimate beefs over patent infringement related to their products, some companies employing only a few lawyers and developing no products continue to sue indiscriminately.

And the cost of damages seems to know no limits. The industry marveled at the $612 million Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) ended up paying to scrappy patent prosecutor NTP, but that's nothing compared with what some are asking for. Nokia (NYSE: NOK) recently got slapped with a lawsuit demanding -- get this -- at least $17.7 billion. The complainant in this case is a German company called IP-Com, bankrolled by Fortress Investment Group (NYSE: FIG).

Our company, IP.com Inc., based in the USA, should not be confused with any other company using a similar name. Information about our company, which serves many leading companies with tools to protect and secure their intellectual property assets, can be found on our corporate website at www.ip.com.

IP.com was founded to fill a growing void in the tools available to the intellectual property community. Our initial product, the IP.com Prior Art Database, was created to provide companies with a fast and effective, centralized outlet for publishing and searching technical disclosures. Since its inception, the IP.com Prior Art Database has continued to grow, attracting high profile clients such as IBM, General Electric, Motorola, Abbott Laboratories, and Eastman Kodak (to name a few).

In our process of developing the Intellectual Property Prior Art Database, we have built a rock-solid, easy-to-use, legally-defensible method for providing verifiable date-stamps and ensuring the integrity (proving they haven't been altered) of electronic files. This technology has become the cornerstone of IP.com's service offerings. We have extended our product line to allow corporations to utilize our innovative file protection (safeguarding) methods on their own private (internal) data using the IP.com Innovation Q or the online IP.com Creative Registry.

The IP.com Innovation Q product combines the legal safeguarding processes along with secured-access search and retrieval to provide a complete solution for safeguarding, searching, and archiving your sensitive data (such as R&D lab notebooks).

Journalists are welcome to contact the CEO of IP.com, Thomas J. Colson, a registered patent attorney, for more information about the company, to get a quote or comment, or to arrange an interview about current issues in patent litigation and intellectual property management for innovative companies.

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