Green Marking And Greenwashing: Analyising The Threat And Legal Gaps In India
- IJLLR Journal
- 1 hour ago
- 2 min read
Abhishek Johnson, LL.M., Christ (Deemed to be University) Bengaluru
INTRODUCTION
Innovation is the creation, development and innovation of a new product and service with the aim of providing efficiency of products, ameliorating the short comings. In its agenda for 2030 on sustainable development, WIPO summed up the importance of IP right to green technology and sustainable economy. Green innovation is a product of 21st century where Green marketing was introduced in 1980s whereby its importance has been substantially increased. In the modern world innovation is not confined with technology and industries but it also have an accountability to promote inventions of sustainable development nature which promotes products which are 100% natural. Green innovation concept is something which witnessed a paradigm shift to sustainable, economic friendly, resource friendly economy and society. They subsequently leads to sustainable development and pace up the transition towards a green economy. Green technologies can be less polluting and more focus on implementing environment protecting standards in their innovations.
In this century, the corporations and companies are showing a tendency to go with a trend of “Go-Green” whereby they are they claim themselves as Green tag products. The concept of “Going Green” has gained significant traction of recent years and this trend has been tremendously extended to a realm of Intellectual Property especially with the Trademark system. The reason why companies prefer Green marking over their products is that they could align their brand identity with so-called eco-friendly values. They got this conscience because they realised that linking their product with trademark concept like sustainability, health or nature, can significantly boost their revenue and attract more customers. This can be substantiated by INTA (International Trademark Association) Report on the Effect of Green washing and Green hushing on Brand Value. However, there are many limitations to verify this green trademarks, even such mechanisms exist, they remain obsolete or tendering a negligent impact. This lacks transparency allows businesses to exploit the green label raising serious concerns about credibility of these fancy green terminologies.
