Stringent intellectual property rules could hamper the spread of technology needed to fight climate change, an advisor to European Union policymakers has warned.

The transfer of non-polluting technology from industrialised to developing countries is likely to be one of the key topics addressed when international negotiators meet in Copenhagen this December as part of efforts to fashion a successor to the Kyoto protocol, as the core United Nations accord aimed at addressing global warming is known.

Paul David, a member of the Knowledge for Growth (K4G) group, which counsels the European Commission on industrial innovation, appealed to the EU and US not to resort to litigation over patents relating to ‘green’ technology such as that used in generating renewable energy.

Arguing that patents can “inhibit” the spread of equipment to developing countries that are most affected by water shortages and other symptoms of climate change, he said: “What we need is the freer moving of technology knowledge.”

David, also a professor of economics at Stanford University in California, predicted that the scientific community has a “window” of only fifteen years to develop technologies for addressing climate change if emissions of carbon dioxide are to be stabilised by the middle of this century. Such stabilisation will be necessary, he said, if an increase in the earth’s temperature of two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is to be averted.