fast track for green patents

The Times
May 12, 2009
Management news in brief: Carol Lewis
Fast track for green patents
Businesses and entrepreneurs can apply from tomorrow to have patent applications fast-tracked through a “green channel” for innovations which benefit the environment, it was announced yesterday at the China-UK Economic and Financial Dialogue.
Sean Dennehey, the director of patents at the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), said that the initiative aims to reduce patent times for green technologies from up to three years to less than nine months. “There are critics of the patent system who say that it takes too long to get a patent, making it difficult to exploit important technologies quickly enough. We wanted something we could do quickly and now, because climate change won’t wait,” he said. In the past ten years the number of green technology patent applications has increased by 500 per cent.
The IPO receives about 23,500 patent applications a week – about 150 to 200 of these are thought to be for green technologies. The IPO hopes that other countries, including China, will adopt the scheme.