The 2024 IP Report from IP Australia confirms what has been bubbling under for a while now: Australia is a hotbed for innovation in the renewable energy sector.
Among 19 major economies surveyed, Australia ranked second in terms of growth* in "cleantech" patent filings – technologies that may lessen, nullify or even reverse the environmental impact of an existing product or process. While patent filings are not the only proxy for innovation, they're acknowledged as a fairly good indicator.
Over recent years, many companies across the energy ecosystem have "gone green". Electric cars are now mainstream, and more than 30% of Australian homes now have rooftop solar photovoltaic panels with up to half of these also having batteries.
There are a three good (and complementary) reasons why cleantech patenting has grown in Australia.
The first is that environmental consciousness, particularly as it pertains to climate change, has increasing exponentially throughout the world. It is generally accepted that pollution cannot be abated with existing technologies and therefore cleantech technologies have taken centre stage over recent years.
The second is that Australia and cleantech are highly compatible – we have more sunlight (solar), coastline (silica/PV, tidal), desert (silica/PV), wind, critical minerals (lithium, uranium, iron ore) and heat (geothermal) than most. In fact, about the only natural resource we lack is oil – and that's arguably what's caused the climate crisis in the first place.
These two factors alone ensure that Australia is a cleantech destination of choice for foreign innovators – those who develop their technologies abroad and exploit them here. But how do we encourage and incentivise our local cleantech community?
The answer, of course, brings it all together: money, investment – and in the context of Australian R&D as a whole, necessarily Government investment. Until recently, there had been little to incentivise, for instance, a grad student in a chemistry lab choosing cleantech over pharma – but times are changing with the advent of the Future Made in Australia Act, which earmarks around $22.7 billion in bringing together a range of manufacturing and renewable energy programs under one umbrella. And why wouldn't we play to our strengths? Given our resources, these are sectors of the cleantech continuum in which we have a decided home court advantage.
Working with cleantech innovation – tips for in-house counsel
To aid in-house counsel and professionals working in the highly technical cleantech space secure intellectual property rights, we've provided a few key tips and reminders to assist with the smooth running and success of your portfolio:
- Familiarise yourself with the technology your company is developing and understand the science behind it.
- Build good relationships with your R&D and innovation teams to understand their needs and challenges.
- Be proactive in your legal support, identify potential roadblocks and simplify legal procedures with clear, concise advice.
- Patent strategy is key – ensure you're communicating with your patent attorney for timely advice on applications, what else is happening in the sector, and managing the portfolio.
- Stay abreast of developments and funding opportunities such as the Future Made in Australia Act initiatives.
How we can assist
It is an exciting time to be involved in Australia's cleantech ecosystem. As patent attorneys, we see new technologies each day, accompanied by laboratory-scale data that if scalable, are potentially game-changing. And the best bit? This is an industry sector in which Australia continues to punch well above its weight. Exciting times ahead.
* The analysis, by IP Australia's Patent Analytics Hub, used global patent data provided by PATSTAT, covering patent families filed between 2017 and 2021. The key growth metric used was defined as the annual growth in patent families filed within a jurisdiction (in percentage terms), relative to the average growth across key comparator countries, given by the gradient of the line of best fit of the total patent family data.
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