Developing countries call for easing IPR costs of clean technologies, November 15, 2013, The Hindu

For the developed countries it was a devil buried at the climate negotiations last year at Doha. At the Warsaw talks, the developing countries, including India, resuscitated the devil — easing the costs of intellectual property rights (IPR) on clean technologies — back to life, by demanding that a funding mechanism be set up to buy licenses on clean but costly technologies to provide to the poor countries.

The topic of intellectual property rights has been such a hot potato for the developed countries that at the climate talks last year, developing countries had to agree to back-burner it in order to build consensus.

Bringing the topic right back to the centre-stage again at Warsaw, the Egyptian lead negotiator, speaking for the Like Minded Developing Countries, said: “Like the Harry Potter series character, in Doha, IPR was the ‘word which should not be named’. But we live in the real world not in a fictional world. In this real world we live in, we need to address this issue of IPRs in a pragmatic manner, not run away from this issue.”

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/developing-countries-call-for-easing-ipr-costs-of-clean-technologies/article5355065.ece