We are the only organisation that is both an Implementation Partner and an Official Nominator to Prince William’s increasingly influential annual environmental awards programme, The Earthshot Prize.
Inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s “Moonshot” challenge in 1962 to land a man on the moon within a decade, The Earthshot Prize was launched by Prince William in 2020 to search for and scale the most innovative solutions to the world’s greatest environmental challenges. Every year it awards prizes of £1m to the winner in each of five categories: Protect and Restore Nature; Clean Our Air; Revive Our Oceans; Build a Waste-Free World and Fix Our Climate.
Our influence and the importance of patents to protecting and commercialising environmental technologies was more in evidence than ever at the 2024 awards, held in Cape Town.
As Earthshot Prize CEO Hannah Jones gave her speech during the opening event, The Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys’ name appeared on the illuminated screens behind her and around the room, along with other Official Nominators, as she thanked the organisations that make the Prize possible.
The phrase “patented technology” was used numerous times on The Earthshot Prize website and in publicity to refer to solutions developed by a number of the finalists.
Our members forwarded more than 30 of their amazing clients to us which we nominated for the 2024 Prize and, for the fourth successive year since its inception, a team of 25 volunteer CIPA members, led by CIPA Fellow Jerry Bridge-Butler, performed IP due diligence checks on a shortlist of potential finalists before the 2024 awards were made.
When the Prize was launched in 2020 we quickly recognised that there was an opportunity to offer our members’ expertise. Our offer to perform due diligence checks on the shortlist of finalists to identify any intellectual property issues that might impact the awarding of a prize was gratefully accepted and we became an Implementation Partner.
In its second year, our ongoing dialogue with the Earthshot team was helping them to better understand the relationship between patents and the commercialisation and scaling of technology to tackle environmental pollution and climate change. We were appointed an Official Nominator.
Success was immediate, with CIPA nominees winning in one category (Notpla), and being named as finalists in two others (Low Carbon Materials and Lanzatech). Another of our nominees (Colorifix) was chosen as a finalist the following year.
There was no CIPA nominee on the green carpet in 2024. But one finalist, MiAlgae, a biotech company based in the Scotland, protects its invention with patents thanks to our members at the Edinburgh-based firm, Hindles. MiAlgae produces a sustainable alternative to Omega-3 fish oils by synthesizing the by-products from whisky distillation.
The Earthshot initiative has grown year-on-year and is now a global network of nominators, innovators, amabassadors, advisors, trustees and investors, including current and former Heads of State, United Nations chiefs, movie stars and humanitarian and climate change leaders. We are proud to be a part of the Earthshot family.