With the overall increase in world population, and the rising living standards in countries monikered as “emerging economies,” it should be no surprise that there is increasing demand for the simplest of all human needs – clean drinking water. Most of us are aware of the global challenges presented by a lack of potable water, with these issues gaining increased attention by both the press and national governments. (For an in-depth review of global water policy issues, the United Nations maintains an excellent web resource at http://www.un.org/issues/m-water.html.)
A very unscientific review of the USPTO database by your author revealed approximately 500 issued patents and patent applications relating to the narrow subject of water purification. Considering all the technologies potentially relevant to the production and distribution of clean water – including those relating to non-water technologies, such as pipeline distribution and chemical distillation – the number of patents arguably relevant to the provision of clean water is potentially quite large.
Which brings us to the point of this note – is it possible that consumers of clean water would have to bear the cost of royalty payments for patented technologies that provide clean water?
There seems to be little online discussion regarding this point; but one has to wonder whether this is a possibility. After all, most everyone agrees that demand for clean water will only increase over time; and most agree that our current approaches to providing clean water (collection of precipitation; groundwater) will, at some point, fail to provide an adequate amount of potable water for a global population that is living longer and demanding greater accommodation in terms of basic living needs. The combination of all of these factors seems to suggest that clean water production technologies will be necessary to increase water availability, and as such these technologies, if patented, may become the subject of IP licensing programs.
This brings us to the question of compulsory licensing. As discussed in a previous post, compulsory licenses are provisions within the patent laws of most nations that effectively allow a country to “issue” a license to patented technology with little or no royalty return to the patent holder, typically for reasons of public health and welfare. Most of the activity surrounding compulsory licenses to date has been in relation to patents relating to pharmaceutical therapies, such as drugs intended to control HIV infection. However, it does not seem to be much of a stretch to believe that governments who are responsible for providing for their citizens’ most basic needs may at some point begin to issue compulsory licenses for patents relating to clean water technologies. Not much has been said or written on this topic, but your author does suspect this will become an important emerging issue in global IP law and management.
Comments