Wind Power Wars: What Hope Now For Technology Transfers

Posted on 28. May, 2010 by Ross in New Technologies, North America

Hopes of top corporations sharing patent information with developing countries in climate change technology transfers seem more remote this week after a war has broken out in the US wind power market between two of the world’s biggest engineering brands.

Two years ago General Electric (GE) filed two patent infringement claims against Mitsubishi in the US, relating to turbine frames and grid connection technology. Since then, Mitsubishi’s sales of wind turbines in the US dropped from $2bn per year to nothing, whilst GE built up a 70% share of the marketplace.

Mitsubishi always protested it’s innocence, and was vindicated back in January 2010 when the US International Trade Commission declared that no patent violation had occurred. Despite the ruling, GE then filed another law suit in the US courts accusing Mitsubishi of more patent breaches.

Now fed up of the situation, Mitsubishi has fought back with two legal actions of it’s own. One case accuses GE of infringing a Mitsubishi patent, whilst the other is an anti-trust case which explosively accuses GE of attempting to kill competition in the marketplace to the detriment of US consumers.

These kind of legal wrangling is commonplace in the US, but it raises uncomfortable questions over the world’s ability to fight climate change. In order to reduce global carbon emissions, developed nations are going to have to share climate change technologies with the developing world. However, it is not governments but companies which own these technologies and continually show little willingness to surrender any of their know-how to help save the planet.

Whilst a handful of companies such as Somar International Ltd are aware of the business opportunities in climate change technology transfers, such examples are rare and there are few market drivers for the kind of scale of technology transfer that is really needed. Despite recent reformations in the green patent databases, it is likely to be a long time before governments are willing to put the needs of the planet over the desires of their business leaders and create the sort of incentives and compensation which will move technology transfer into the realms of a need-to business strategy.