Francis Gurry, Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), explains why innovation is fundamental to tackling climate change and building a green economy. He discusses how technology is unevenly shared worldwide and examines the public policy tensions between stimulating the creation of new technologies and the imperative to diffuse them on a global scale. He explores exhaustion of rights and parallel importation – looking at the differential prices across markets. He finishes on what could be achieved at Durban, explaining that “the patent system is the memory of humanity’s technology”.