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,...

Scientist in a lab coat, seen from behind, looks through glass at robotic production equipment.

If AI collapses the cost of making your product, the question is no longer how cheaply you can make it. It is what stops a competitor making the same thing. That...

Engineer on a raised walkway looking over long factory production lines, with pylons visible beyond the windows

There are two ways to hold a position in a technology. You can own the technology. Or you can own what it takes to build and install the technology at volume....

Engineer seen from behind holds a small device up to a window overlooking city office towers at dusk.

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...

Engineer in silhouette on a riverbank at dusk, watching traffic cross an older bridge beside a new empty one

A patent protects a mechanism. It does not protect a share of the benefit. Those are different things, and the gap between them is where a great deal of intellectual property...

Engineer seen from behind writing in a lab notebook at a bench, with a gold quantum computer cryostat behind.

A technical lead is worth what you can prove. Being first, or fastest, or best matters only if the evidence behind the claim survives a hostile reading, whether from a court,...

Engineer seen from behind in a dark operations centre, watching one bright monitor among a curved bank of screens.

Capability is not what separates an attacker from a defender. Incentives are. Ben Thompson’s Stratechery piece of 24 August 2026 works this through in agentic cybersecurity, and the logic travels a...

Person seen from behind watching workers remove an old sign from a building at dusk, a crate of sign letters at their feet

A rebrand does not just launch a new name. It starts a clock on the old one. Stop using a trade mark, show no intention of going back to it, and...

A customer seen from behind walking out of an empty marble banking hall, lit smartphone in hand.

Global banking has just posted the most profitable year of any industry – US$1.3 trillion in net income – and still trades at the lowest price-to-book of any industry. McKinsey’s preview...

Scientist in a lab coat, seen from behind, placing a vial into a long lit sample rack in a dim laboratory. (107 characters)

A treatment that works once and keeps working for years is a very different commercial asset from a pill taken every day. The value is created up front. It then has...