From protection to competitiveness: a new role for IP

Speaking at the MARQUES Annual Conference in Lisbon, João Negrão, Executive Director of the EUIPO, argued for a shift in how businesses understand and use intellectual property: from a tool that protects, to an asset that competes.

Beyond business as usual

Negrão’s point is not that IP protection matters less. It is that registration and enforcement, on their own, will not help businesses achieve competitive scale. The real question, particularly for innovative SMEs and scale-ups, is whether they have the tools, information and market infrastructure to turn their IP rights into finance and growth.

In practice, this means businesses should be able to answer questions such as:

• What is this IP asset actually worth?
• Can it support a licensing or technology-transfer deal?
• Could it make the business more attractive to investors or lenders?
• Is it suitable for IP-backed finance?
• Can it be used to build partnerships, enter new markets or extend the business model?

This matters most for companies whose value sits mainly in intangible assets: brand reputation, technology, design, know-how, data and creative content.

A proposed EU competence centre

The European Commission has proposed extending the EUIPO’s mandate to create a Competence Centre for IP-backed finance and the commercialisation of IP. Its intended functions include:

• A voluntary EU-wide framework for the valuation and disclosure of IP assets.
• Support for more consistent and credible valuation across sectors and Member States.
• A multilingual digital matchmaking platform for licensing and transfers of IP rights.
• Advisory, helpdesk and training support on IP-backed finance and commercialisation.
• Support for financial institutions to develop products suited to intangible assets.

The aim is not to impose a single mandatory valuation figure on every IP right. Instead, the proposal envisages a voluntary framework intended to support more consistent assessment and communication of IP value, potentially making IP assets easier for businesses, investors and lenders to consider in commercial and financing decisions.

Why valuation is the sticking point

Businesses often know their IP is important but struggle to translate that into a figure a lender, investor, licensee or buyer can actually use. The Commission’s proposal is built on the idea that shared valuation and disclosure practices would lower transaction costs and increase confidence in IP-related deals. 

For brand owners specifically, this matters: trade mark portfolios are often commercially central, yet rarely translated into board-level planning or financing discussions in a systematic way. A clearer valuation framework could help close that gap.

What this means for your IP portfolio

This is a useful prompt to look beyond “is it registered and enforceable” and ask whether your portfolio is actually helping the business meet its commercial goals. Worth reviewing:

• Alignment: do your IP rights match your growth strategy, priority products and target markets?
• Documentation: are ownership, chain-of-title and contractual arrangements clear enough for an investor, buyer, lender or licensee?
• Commercial potential: which assets could support licensing, co-branding, technology transfer or market entry?
• Internal visibility: is there a coherent approach to recording, valuing and presenting intangible assets?
• Shared understanding: are legal, finance, commercial and management teams working from the same picture of what creates value for the business?

The wider direction of travel

This is not a new theme for the EUIPO. In 2023, Negrão already pointed to the need for support beyond registration itself, covering IP evaluation, financing, commercialisation and monetisation. The direction is consistent: making intangible assets more visible, understandable and usable within the commercial and financial system.

Whether the competence centre and valuation framework deliver on that ambition will depend on implementation and, above all, uptake by financial institutions. The underlying point for brand owners stands regardless: protection is the starting point; competitive advantage depends on what you do with the rights you hold.