Developer at a desk in a dark office comparing a licence document on paper with code on a lit screen

The price of frontier AI capability is falling towards zero. The consequence for an IP strategy is not that AI has become cheaper. It is that anything you thought you were...

The patent is rarely where the money is decided. The licence is. Three IP developments from the past week make that point, and each turns on terms settled, or left unsettled,...

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Adding AI to a product is not a strategy. Moving to where the value is going is. And every real move changes what your company controls, which makes it an IP...

Wheat breeder seen from behind at dawn, looking across rows of small breeding trial plots stretching to the horizon.

Some assets cannot be built on any timeline a budget can shorten. When that is true, the choice is no longer build, buy or licence. It is licence, or stay out....

Engineer seen from behind on a lit industrial steel staircase, landings receding above and below

Most boards plan around a single date. The patent expires, competitors arrive, the revenue line falls off a ledge. That model is tidy, it sits in the forecast, and for high-value...

Person seen from behind walking down a dim archive aisle of shelved boxes, holding a lit tablet.

Intellectual property rights don’t dissolve the moment you stop paying attention to them. That’s the thread running through several developments last week, and it’s worth more attention than most companies give...

Technician seen from behind in a dark data centre, looking down a long aisle of lit server racks.

If a capability you spent years building can be downloaded on a Sunday afternoon, the question is not how to stop that. It is what you own that survives it. Ben...

Engineer in a hard hat walks past rows of high-voltage transformers in a large electrical equipment factory

When a market is about to triple in a decade, the patent filing map you drew for yesterday’s demand is the one that will let you down. A McKinsey analysis, written...

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A new technology hits a point where the question stops being whether it works and becomes who already owns the ground around it. Quantum computing has recently crossed that line. McKinsey’s...

Glowing glass chess king on a dark boardroom table at dusk, symbolising IP strategy and competitive advantage.

When investors describe a winning company, they now reach for three ideas: credible AI adoption, resilience, and durable competitive advantage. McKinsey’s latest survey of long-term investors — What matters most to...