Mobilising the IP in Europe's deep tech
- publish258
- Sep 4
- 4 min read
Viorel Peca at the European Innovation Council discusses what Europe's largest investor in deep-tech ventures expects at each stage of scaling high-risk ideas with the potential to become gamechangers
Viorel Peca, head of transition, European Innovation Council
The intellectual property in Europe’s deep tech is now being mobilised to upgrade its capacity to create value at the same level as the United States and China. Historically, Europe has fallen behind in innovation, even though it has remained a research superpower. Now it is accepting the challenge to catch the next wave of technologies and bring them to market.
The European Innovation Council, a €10 billion programme of the European Union established in 2021, has been supporting breakthrough technologies and start-ups in deep tech with the capacity to scale. In its first three years, it supported over 500 start-ups, 275 advanced research programmes and 140 commercialisation projects. In the process, the EIC has now become Europe’s largest investor in early-stage deep-tech ventures and is making an impact on the scaling of European companies, having supported over 150 centaurs (valuations above €100 million), out of which 15 have a valuation above €500 million including eight over €1 billion (Impact Report, EIC, 2023).
In the EIC’s programmes, IP has a fundamental role to play in the whole cycle of identifying, testing, launching and scaling ideas that are high risk, but have the potential to become gamechangers for our economy or society. For us IP is not a matter of ticking boxes. We are supporting projects to protect IP and encouraging ventures to file patents as part of a well-thought-out IP strategy in support of their business goals.
Pathfinder IP
At the start, in our early-stage projects, such as Pathfinder, we want researchers to think about the competitive landscape in which they operate and the IP they could create, not just for the sake of filing a patent (as important as it may be), but as the foundation of a possible exploitation strategy. It can be eye opening when you investigate the space around your technology and see who else is playing in the same space. It will help you to identify your market and build your IP portfolio around it.
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