Exploring the Intersection of Patent Law and Environmental Regulations

It is interesting is that though the issue of societal good has been addressed in patent law, environmental utility or “good” is addressed nowhere. Given the landscape of environmental policy in the United States, it is a thought-provoking proposition as to whether patent law should be interpreted or altered to meet the assurances of our country’s environmental regulations seeing as many of them are established at a federal level yet carried out at the state level. For example, should patent law allow an invention or technology to become protected by patent if the direct product or byproduct it creates is tightly controlled or outlawed by environmental regulation? An exploration of this overarching question follows.

Patent Application to Environmental Issues

A predominant driver of our country’s economy is that increases in technological innovation lead to improved standards of living. Despite these economic benefits, some technology creates pollution,

Solving the invention market failure is the less daunting problem of the two as existing intellectual property regulations, like patent law, already do this to a significant degree. However, the positive environmental externality market failure presents new difficulties for intellectual property law. Solving externality problems require internalizing the costs and benefits of externalities. Patent law must bring environmental innovators’ incentives to innovate in line with the actual societal or environmental value of their potential inventions. Placing private innovators’ incentives in accord with the social value of innovation will lead private innovators to engage in the socially or environmentally optimal level of