In 2019 the UK was the first major economy to embrace a legal obligation to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. More broadly, the 2021 UK Innovation Strategy sets out the UK government’s vision to make the UK a global hub for innovation by 2035 with a target of increasing public and private sector R&D expenditure to 2.4% of GDP to support the UK being a science superpower with a world-class research and innovation system. IP rights create an incentive for R&D which ultimately leads to innovation. Analysis and insights from IP data can therefore help provide a better understanding of how the IP system is being used and where and what innovation is taking place. Research and analysis of IP data is a key input to the ongoing work of the UKIPO’s Green Tech Working Group which seeks to: further the UK’s status as a global leader by making the UK’s IP environment the best for innovating green technology; develop and deliver IP policies to support government’s ambition on climate change and green technologies; and to help innovators best protect and commercialise their green tech innovations both at home and internationally. The UKIPO has been developing a broad portfolio of ‘green’ IP analytics research. A series of patent analytics reports have been published looking at green technologies, and analysis of how the UK’s Green Channel scheme for accelerated processing of green patent applications has been conducted. Patents have been used to identify technological comparative advantage within different green technologies at a country level, and new insights uncovered by mapping green technology patents to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Trade mark data provides a timeliness and closeness to market factor that patent data does not, and complementary trade mark analysis of UK ‘green’ trade marks, identified using a machine learning algorithm, provides a commercialisation angle to our research.

1. The race to net zero: Tracking the
green industrial revolution through IP
Chris Harrison
Head of IP Analytics and Data Insights
UK Intellectual Property Office
AI-SDV, October 2022

2. UK Innovation Strategy: Leading the future by creating it
• Published July 2021
• Sets out the government’s vision to make the UK a global hub for innovation by
2035
• The government seeks to generate disruptive inventions, the most tech-centric
industry and government in the world, more ‘unicorns’, and a nation of firms and
people that all aspire to innovate
• At a systemic level, the government has a target of increasing public and private
sector R&D expenditure to 2.4% of GDP to support the UK being a science
superpower with a world-class research and innovation system
• IP rights create an incentive for R&D, which ultimately leads to innovation
• Analysis and insights from IP data can therefore help provide a better
understanding of how the IP system is being used and where and what innovation
is taking place
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-innovation-strategy-leading-the-future-by-creating-it

3. The path to net zero
• In 2019 the UK was the first major economy to embrace
a legal obligation to achieve net zero carbon emissions
by 2050
• In 2020 the UK published a Ten Point Plan for a Green
Industrial revolution
• In 2021 the UK published a net zero strategy to keep us
on track for UK carbon budgets and net zero by 2050
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/net-zero-strategy

4. UK Ten Point Plan (10PP) for a Green Industrial Revolution
The plan focuses on increasing ambition in the following areas:
• advancing offshore wind
• driving the growth of low carbon hydrogen
• delivering new and advanced nuclear power
• accelerating the shift to zero emission vehicles
• green public transport, cycling and walking
• ‘jet zero’ and green ships
• greener buildings
• investing in carbon capture, usage and storage
• protecting our natural environment
• green finance and innovation
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-ten-point-plan-for-a-green-industrial-revolution

5. The green technology patent landscape
• UKIPO has published a series of seven mini-reports looking at the
worldwide patent landscapes in the different green technology areas of
the Ten Point Plan (10PP) for a Green Industrial Revolution:
• offshore wind
• low-carbon hydrogen
• nuclear power
• environmentally-friendly transportation (zero emission vehicles,
green public transport, jet zero and green ships)
• heat pumps (greener buildings)
• carbon capture, usage and storage
• flood and coastal defences (protecting our natural environment)
• These reports were published on the Science and Innovation day of the
UN COP26 Summit that was held in Glasgow, UK, in November 2021

6. Global growth of international patent families (IPFs) in 10PP technologies
versus all technologies, 2000-2020 (base 100 in 2000)

7. Analysis using international patent families (IPFs)
• Our analysis is done using international patent families (IPFs), which represent a unique
invention and includes published patent applications in at least two countries
• This is a more reliable measure of inventive activity than using absolute counts of published
patent applications
• IPFs are a reliable and neutral proxy for inventive activity because they provide a degree of
control for patent quality and value by only representing inventions deemed important enough
by the applicant to seek protection internationally (Dernis et al., 2001; Harhoff et al., 2003; Van Pottelsberghe and van
Zeebroeck, 2008; Frietsch and Schmoch, 2010; Martinez, 2011; Squicciarini et al., 2013; Dechezleprêtre et al., 2017)
• IPFs enables a comparison of the innovative activities of countries, fields and companies
internationally, since it creates a sufficiently homogeneous population of patent families that can
be directly compared with one another, thereby reducing the national biases that often arise
when comparing patent applications across different national patent offices

8. Putting absolute patenting levels into context
nc,t = number of patents for country c in technology t
nt = sum of patents in all countries in technology t
Nc = number of patents for country c
N = sum of patents for all countries
More specialised
Less specialised
• Using the Relative Specialisation Index (RSI)
• Defined as a country's share of patents in a
particular technology, divided by that country's
share of patents in all fields of technology
• It controls, to an extent, for the different
propensities to patent globally
• The Relative Specialisation Index (RSI) for
country c in technology t is defined as:
𝑅𝑆𝐼 =
𝑋 − 1
𝑋 + 1
𝑋𝑐,𝑡
𝑛𝑐,𝑡
𝑁𝑐
𝑁𝑡
𝑁
where
> 0
< 0

9. Relative Specialisation Index for 10PP technologies, 2000-2020
RSI ranking Offshore wind
Low-carbon
hydrogen
Nuclear power
Greener
vehicles
Greener
buildings
Carbon
capture, usage
and storage
Flood and
coastal
defences
1 UK Australia France Germany UK Australia South Korea
2 France Canada UK France France Canada Australia
3 South Korea USA Canada UK Australia India Canada
4 India France South Korea USA Canada UK Japan
5 Australia Germany Japan Canada Germany South Korea China
6 China Japan USA India India USA France
7 Germany UK China South Korea USA France UK
8 USA South Korea Australia China South Korea China India
9 Canada India India Australia China Japan USA
10 Japan China Germany Japan Japan Germany Germany
Rankings calculated using the Relative Specialisation Index, and limited to comparing
the top 10 patenting countries worldwide – see individual reports for further details

10. Global growth of international patent families (IPFs) in green and brown
technologies versus all technologies, 2000-2020 (base 100 in 2000)

11. Technology breakdown of IPFs relating to green technologies,
2000-2020

12. Top UK green patent owners, 2000-2020

13. Identifying ‘green specialists’ in the UK, 2000-2020

14. UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• 17 interlinked global goals designed to be a
"shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for
people and the planet, now and into the future"
• Set up in 2015
• Intended to be achieved by 2030
• Last year PatentSight mapped patent data to
the targets and indicators of the UN SDGs
• 13 SDGs mapped to the global patent system*
• 97 predefined sustainable technology fields
*No patent mapping possible to SDGs 8, 10, 16 and 17

15. SDG-related patenting over past 20 years (IPFs, 2002-2021)

16. SDG-related patenting over past 5 years (IPFs, 2017-2021)

17. SDG-related IPFs for top 10 patenting countries

18. SDG split for green tech patents (IPFs, 2002-2021)

19. UKIPO Green Channel
• Introduced in May 2009
• Accelerated patent processing
• Search,
• Publication, and/or
• Substantive examination
• Invention has to have an environmental benefit
• No fee

20. UKIPO Green Channel usage
Green Channel applications per year Proportion of green tech patents filed in
the UK using the Green Channel

21. Top users of the UKIPO Green Channel

22. IP Analytics - more than just patents…
(UK00003523771)
(UK00003707942)
(UK00918111321)
(UK00915089733)
(UK00003408161)
(UK00918168156)
(UK00003541203)

23. EUIPO Green classifier using machine-supported learning
https://euipo.europa.eu/tunnel-web/secure/webdav/guest/document_library/observatory/documents/reports/2021_Green_EU_trade_marks/2021_Green_EU_trade_marks_FullR_en.pdf

24. Green trade marks in the UK, 2000-2021

25. Green trade marks in the UK by product group, 2000-2021

26. Green trade marks in the UK by product group, 2000-2021

27. Green trade marks in the UK by applicant country, 2000-2021
Country
Number of green
TMs in UK
% of green TMs
United Kingdom 42,507 5.1%
China 8,616 14.3%
United States of
America
3,736 6.5%
Germany 1,011 11.9%
Hong Kong,
SAR China
669 11.2%
Switzerland 586 9.0%
France 562 9.0%
South Korea 490 14.2%
Japan 485 8.3%
Canada 404 8.1%

28. Green IP trends across rights (UK applicants), 2001-2020

29. • Full analytical paper to be published approx. November 2022 on gov.uk
• More broadly, the role of IP in supporting green technologies and promoting innovations to help
us get to net zero is a key corporate priority for UKIPO
• We want to create the right environment to give entrepreneurs, innovators, and businesses the
confidence to create greener technologies that will enhance environmental improvements
• We are looking at further opportunities to better promote the development and adoption of
green technologies through the IP framework
• We are also engaging internationally with WIPO GREEN to share best practice and understand
initiatives that other offices have enacted to assist IP in green technologies (inc. a co-hosted
UKIPO - WIPO GREEN webinar 30 November 2-3pm CET)
• We are currently reviewing our options from a policy perspective but plan to take this forward in
the coming months
Next steps

30. Thank you
Chris Harrison
Head of IP Analytics and Data Insights
christopher.harrison@ipo.gov.uk