GreenXchange

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Description

"A small group of companies spearheaded by Nike have partnered with the nonprofit Creative Commons to try to change that. Their novel initiative, called GreenXchange, aims to allow companies to share intellectual property for green product design, packaging, manufacturing, and other uses. If it succeeds, this budding coalition could accelerate innovation across companies and sectors. At minimum, it stands to rewrite the rules about how companies share.

The project was incubated at Nike, which for years has been developing materials and processes to reduce the environmental impacts of its own products -- things like water-based adhesives, solvent-reduced synthetic leather, and "green rubber," which cuts the use of harmful chemicals used in traditional formulas by 97 percent, according to the company. Some of these innovations were posted on Nike's website, though there was no way to determine who was using this information, or how.

Meanwhile, Nike found a lot of similar R&D being done by different companies, as well as gaps in research, says Kelly Lauber, Global Director, Sustainable Ventures at Nike. "In order to get to a green economy -- in order to really head off some of the things that we're going to be facing such as water scarcity, climate change, and energy shortages -- we're going to have to start collaborating in a much more open innovation way," she told me recently. "Because the issues in front of us, they're all too big for any one company."

Lauber says she and her colleagues "stumbled upon" Creative Commons, a nonprofit that has designed licenses that allow creators of intellectual property (IP) to share their creations so as to control which rights they reserve and which they share. Creative Commons originally focused on artwork and written documents, from Wikipedia to the White House website. A few years ago it expanded its work to include scientific research.

Nike, along with Best Buy, partnered with Creative Commons to create GreenXchange. The project was announced earlier this year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Under GreenXchange, member companies can make patents and know-how available to the public in three ways. First, at the most basic level, every contributor commits to a "non-assertion pledge" allowing its patent portfolio to be used in basic academic research in order to promote open collaboration, innovation, and discovery among those involved in primary stage research.

Second, a member may voluntarily designate selected patents to be made available under a standard license for sustainability uses, including commercial applications. Those seeking to use the patented inventions are asked to register their commercial use, and if applicable, pay a standard fee. This allows data to be collected and tracked, and the environmental impacts to be measured.

Third, unpatented discoveries or information may be contributed to the network through a "know-how registry." This allows both unpatented and patented knowledge to be contributed, shared, and cited, as well as providing a public repository for prior art in the field.

Creating GreenXchange was no small matter, when one considers the cost and complexity of companies sharing information through traditional means. As John Wilbanks, VP of science at Creative Commons, explained to me, "Making sharing simple is very complicated." (http://www.reuters.com/article/gwmInnovationAndDesign/idUS261247736220090713)