The Intellectual Property and the Environmental Crisis project is a pioneering legal research initiative situated at the intersection of intellectual property law, environmental governance, and innovation theory. Profs. Daniel Benoliel and Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde, a renowned Sorbonne economist, propose a transformative vision for IP systems in response to accelerating climate change and ecological degradation.

The project comprises four major academic articles:

1. Daniel Benoliel & Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde, Ecosystem Services IP: Exploiting Natural Resources for Innovation (forthcoming, Illinois Law Review, vol. 2025, 2025)

This article proposes a novel category of intellectual property rights—Ecosystem Services IP—designed to legally recognize and compensate nature for its contributions to innovation. The model integrates elements from patent law, geographical indications (GIs), and the Nagoya Protocol to promote equitable and sustainable use of natural resources.

2. Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde & Daniel Benoliel, Global Commons IP Governance (forthcoming, Yale Journal of International Law, Vol. 51, 2025)

This piece presents a governance framework for intellectual property rights in areas beyond national jurisdiction, including the High Seas, Antarctica, and Outer Space. Drawing on Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom’s theory of the commons and international law, the article offers legal mechanisms for fair access, ecological preservation, and global stewardship.

3. Daniel Benoliel & Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde, Climate-Responsive Patent Governance (in preparation, 2025)

This article develops the concept of Climate-Responsive IP, a new legal instrument that ties the grant of exclusivity and financial rewards to environmental performance. It introduces the concept of Green Innovation Bonds (GIBs) as well as climate-related IP securitization as financial tools to incentivize climate-aligned invention.

4. Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde & Daniel Benoliel, The Environmental Screening Function of Patents (in preparation, 2025)

This article reconceives patents as instruments for environmental screening,  where the strength and duration of patent rights depend on the expected environmental harm of an invention. It proposes replacing uniform patent protection with calibrated remedies. Linking injunctions, damages, and patent terms to measured harm, to incentivize cleaner innovation. The framework integrates environmental assessment at the patent design stage, enabling firms to internalize ecological costs ex-ante without statutory overhaul, embedding environmental governance directly into patent law.

Together, these works outline a normative shift from intellectual property as a mechanism for market exclusivity toward a model that positions IP as a pillar of climate accountability, ecological governance, and intergenerational justice. This research positions the Faculty of Law and the Center for Law and Technology at the University of Haifa at the forefront of global scholarship on sustainability and innovation.