Climate Change, Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property: Options for Action at the UNFCCC

The author examines the issue of whether intellectual property poses a barrier to technology transfer to address climate change and if so, what policymakers should do at the multilateral level. The book refocuses the question away from empirical approaches towards the key question of the legal capacity of developing countries to prospectively restructure their economies to access technologies and move up the technology value chain. It concludes with a set of recommendations for action at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Dalindyebo Shabalala is Assistant Professor, International Economic Law (Intellectual Property) at Maastricht University Faculty of Law and Visiting Assistant Professor at Case Western Reserve Law School in Cleveland, USA. His research focuses on Climate Change and Intellectual Property issues on one hand and on IP and Development issues on the other. He focuses in particular on the role of Brazil, India and China in the regulation of international technology transfer and intellectual property. Previously, Dalindyebo was the managing attorney of CIEL’s Geneva office, and Director of CIEL's Intellectual Property and Sustainable Development Project. He focused on issues at the intersection of Intellectual Property and Climate Change, Human Health, Biodiversity and Food Security, as well as addressing systemic reform of the international intellectual property system. Dalindyebo was a Research Fellow in the Innovation, Access to Knowledge, and Intellectual Property Programme at the South Centre (2005–2006), an intergovernmental organization of developing countries in Geneva, Switzerland. Dalindyebo received his B.A. degree in Political Science and Cognitive Science, from Vassar College in 1998. At Vassar he was a Ford Foundation Scholar in the Political Science Department and an Undergraduate Research Science Institute Scholar in the Cognitive Science Department. Dalindyebo received his Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the University of Minnesota Law School in 2004, where he worked with Prof. David Weissbrodt on researching the Human Rights Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations. Dalindyebo was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1972 and he received his International Baccalaureate from Waterford Kamhlaba UWCSA in 1992.