The Significance of Intellectual Property Rights in Environment Pollution

The role of technological innovation in lowering pollution is motivated by the rise of global emissions. Technological innovation for carbon dioxide mitigation mainly focuses on the role of patents ignoring trademarks. By combining trademarks and eco-patents, this study introduces a new interaction term while investigating the effects of environmental policy, energy consumption, environmental taxes, urbanisation, and economic growth on the environment. The Nonlinear ARDL and OLS methods are used to test the panel effect, while the Granger causality approach is used to estimate country-specific results. The findings show that trademarks and eco-patents reduce CO2 emissions; however, energy consumption, urbanisation, and economic growth are the primary polluters in both regions. Environmental policies and taxes have a significant impact on the western region's mitigation efforts, while evidence for the southern region is insignificant. Although the variables show unidirectional and bidirectional causal relationships, the outcomes are country-specific. The study also discusses policy implications based on the findings.