Recently, we commemorated two seemingly distinct causes – Earth Day and World Intellectual Property Day. For decades, the former has served to inspire awareness and appreciation for Mother Earth, while the latter has helped highlight the role of patented inventions and other protected ideas in our economy and daily lives. Increasingly, these two goals have become inextricably linked as businesses invest billions of dollars and employ thousands of scientists, engineers and other workers to develop new clean technologies that will revolutionise how we produce and use energy. So I think we need to think about these two events in a new way, as “Green Innovation Week.”