A responsible commitment towards a green future starts with the assessment of its own contribution to our Planet major challenges like global warming.
Any economic activity relies on energy and natural resources consumption, law firms are no exception.
Millions of patents, trademarks and designs are drafted, filed, prosecuted every year, each of them requiring people to work in air-conditioned offices, commuting by car or public transportation to go to work, attending meetings or hearings, with the exchange of terabytes of data.
Any IPR bears its own carbon footprint, and prosecuting millions of them every year releases millions of tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) in our atmosphere, thus contributing to global warming.
And what if we save like 100 Kg of GHG per IPR and per year? these can be millions of tons of GHG not contributing to global warming.
That’s a commitment that any law firm can take. That’s an easy step towards a greener future which only requires goodwill and not any sophisticated technological breakthrough.
IPSIDE strongly engage itself in reducing its contribution to global warming. To this end, with the collaboration of Carbone4, we have assessed our GHG emissions and appraised the carbon footprint of a patent family. On this 2020 international IP day, we are thrilled to share some results with the hope to be followed by many other law firms.
The operation of our law firm accounts for 370 tons of CO2 per year. Each working hour accounts for 3.32 Kg of CO2 and 1.13 Kwh of energy.
When considering the filing of a basic patent family in the IP5, the average GHG footprint of such a family is 4.6 tons of CO2 over 20 years among which 50% are released in the first 5 years.
When knowing the data, reducing by 100Kg the emission per year and per patent family during its first 5 years of prosecution as a first step, by streamlining the process and optimizing the firm operation does not seem to be out of reach.
What if every law firm worldwide commits to the same?
