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🎯 IP Management Pulse #50
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Your inbox-insider from Prof. Wurzer every two weeks
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Here are the hot topics from 20. November - 3. December 2025
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NEWS
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Competition in cloud computing and IP | IP knowledge for the self-employed | Stronger IP protection for artisan products | Productivity growth through IP
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RESSOUCES
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The email course digital marketing | How to use as an IP expert the IPBA Connect Platform
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DEEP DIVES
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From Expert Brand to Growth Engine: How Your Personal Brand Creates Real Business Opportunities | Using Design Rights to Remove Infringing Products from Online Marketplaces | IP Management for Scale-Ups
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IP MANAGEMENT LEARNINGS
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No surprises in royalty streams: the hidden discipline behind Qualcomm’s licensing empire
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🤗 🍵 I wish you an exciting and informative read. I look forward to your comments and our exchange on LinkedIn.
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Competition in cloud computing and IP
Meta’s move to switch to Google’s TPUs marks a small but strategically meaningful shift in the AI infrastructure landscape. For years, Nvidia’s GPU ecosystem has dominated large-scale model training, both technically and commercially. Meta’s exploration of Google’s tensor processing units signals that hyperscalers are looking for real alternatives to avoid dependence on a single supplier, even if TPU availability is still limited and transition requires patience. The underlying trend is clear: cloud providers are turning compute hardware into a competitive differentiator, and whoever controls the stack shapes how fast and efficiently AI technology can be trained and created.
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What IP experts can learn from it
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For IP experts, the key insight is that IP linked to critical infrastructure becomes a decisive strategic asset as competing compute ecosystems emerge. When companies shift between chips and stacks, they effectively move between different IP universes. Each is defined by proprietary libraries, API standards, and performance-critical software components. Whoever controls these layers controls the conditions under which models are trained, optimised, and deployed. As a result, organisations must treat infrastructure IP as a core element of innovation ecosystems. In a world where multiple infrastructures coexist, IP ownership and control over the technical foundations of AI model creation are increasingly as important as the IP in the AI models themselves.
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Background information on the IPBA Connect platform
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Technology Standards on the 🔎IP Management Glossary
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IP knowledge for the self-employed
The EUIPO’s new report "Influencers and IP" highlights how creators who work independently, from influencers to content creators, increasingly face legal and commercial risks tied to the IP they use, create, and distribute. The study shows that many self-employed creators unintentionally rely on unlicensed music, images, logos, or branded products in their posts, often assuming that online availability implies permission. It also finds widespread uncertainty about sponsorship disclosures, rights in co-created content, and the use of AI-generated materials. As platforms tighten enforcement and brands become more protective of their IP assets, the gap between creative practice and legal requirements widens. IP is no longer a niche concern: it now shapes whether collaborations succeed, whether content can be monetised, and whether creators remain attractive partners for brands.
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What IP experts can learn from it
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For IP experts, the report underscores a simple reality: independent creators need structured, accessible IP guidance because their business models depend on it. Influencers must understand when reused material requires a licence, how to avoid infringing trademarks and copyrights online, and what rights they hold in sponsored or collaboratively produced content. The opportunities for influencers and IP are clear: as self-employed creators scale their businesses, IP competence becomes a core enabler of revenue, brand partnerships, and long-term professional credibility.
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Background information on the IPBA Connect platform
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Stronger IP protection for artisan products
The EU’s new geographical indication (GI) scheme for craft and industrial products marks a significant shift in how traditional and region-linked goods are protected. Until now, only food and agricultural products benefitted from EU-level GIs; handmade glass, ceramics, textiles, metalwork, cutlery, or other region-anchored crafts relied mainly on trademarks or designs, which often could not capture the cultural or territorial distinctiveness of these goods. With the new framework, producers can register the names of regionally rooted crafts, obtain EU-wide protection against misuse or imitation, and market their products under a recognised quality label. For local manufacturers, this is more than a symbolic upgrade: it strengthens their ability to differentiate from mass-produced copies, command premium pricing, and safeguard traditional know-how in a globalised market.
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What IP experts can learn from it
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For IP experts, the message is clear: geographical indications are becoming a strategic tool outside the food sector, and businesses will need guidance to navigate this unfamiliar right. Companies must understand how GI registration interacts with existing trademarks, how to demonstrate the link between product quality and geographic origin, and how to organise collective action models. Enforcement also becomes more structured: misuse anywhere in the EU can now be challenged, offering SMEs a new defensive mechanism. The new scheme signals a broader shift from protecting individual brands to safeguarding shared regional reputation and IP experts should be ready to help artisans and manufacturers leverage GIs as part of their differentiation, export strategy, and long-term value creation.
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Background information on the IPBA Connect platform
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The Power of Layered IP in the 📑IP Management Letters
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Productivity growth through IP
The World Bank’s recent analysis of productivity in Europe and Central Asia highlights a persistent problem: despite years of investment, productivity growth remains sluggish, limiting GDP expansion and wage development. The report communicates a core message: investments in the economy are important, nevertheless efficiency gains are what companies are really requiring to survive in the digital era. In this context, IP is not merely a protective mechanism; it is a catalyst that enables firms to invest confidently in innovation, attract financing, and translate R&D results into commercially viable competitive advantages that raise overall economic performance.
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What IP experts can learn from it
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For IP experts, the implication is that productivity depends not only on how much firms spend on R&D, but on how efficiently those investments are transformed into valuable, defensible IP assets. The World Bank’s findings highlight a common gap: companies innovate, but fail to convert research outputs into patents with commercial weight, that protect market share, underpin licensing income, or strengthen bargaining power in negotiations. Strengthening this R&D-to-IP conversion requires clearer IP strategies and earlier involvement of IP experts in innovation processes.
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Resources on the IPBA Connect platform
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IP Process Management on the digital IP lexicon 🧭dIPlex by Max Feucker
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In the 🌱Resource Hub, IP experts find ready-to-use playbooks, templates and tools to sharpen positioning, visibility and client conversion. This section highlights selected resources and shows how they fit into modern, strategic IP practice.
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IP experts discuss the Email Course Digital Marketing
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“This email course offers a clear and structured introduction to digital visibility for IP professionals. Its strength is in reducing complexity and giving IP professionals a practical starting point for thinking about their online presence. For many colleagues, it will serve as a helpful catalyst to get moving in the right direction.”
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Maria is founding partner is Wynants & Co | IBD Group and specialised in IP strategy and management consulting. She also helps ambitious, value-driven professionals to find clarity, direction, and confidence in their own work and life.
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The Email Course Digital Marketing
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The Email Course Digital Marketing helps IP experts build a strong, credible online presence that turns their domain expertise into visibility and client attraction. Through a series of structured emails, the course takes participants step by step from self-assessment and orientation, all the way to actionable digital marketing approaches. The goal: not just to “do marketing”, but to build a digital identity that matches their IP specialty.
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BEST PRACTISE: How to use as an IP expert the IPBA Connect Platform
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“It has been a truly transformative journey professionally and personally. The live LinkedIn interview 🖥️IP Management Talk with Prof. Wurzer was very pleasant and inspiring. It helped me to showcase my practice to a wider audience, broaden my network, get new projects and speaker invitations from new contacts. The downloadable white paper I offered on the 🔗dIPlex was a great opportunity to share my expertise in green IP with new contacts as member of an expert community. This engagement helped me gain recognition outside the circles where I was already known”
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Alihan a trained electromechanical engineer and worked as scientific researcher at various universities in Germany, Türkiye, and Belgium on sustainable technologies, including thermal energy systems, energy efficiency in the automotive industry, e-mobility, smart grids, and sustainable renovation. Since 2008, he is active in the IP field, supporting SMEs, multinationals, and universities with IP management.
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Through a coordinated multi-channel campaign, Dr. Kaya positioned himself as a thought leader at the intersection of sustainability, circular economy and intellectual property using a consistent topic cluster across formats, platforms and conversion-oriented assets. The campaign shows how to systematically craft a personal brand that generates real business leads without diluting subject-matter depth.
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Visible Council the IP Expert Branding Column
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From Expert Brand to Growth Engine: How Your Personal Brand Creates Real Business Opportunities
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By columnist Giulia Donato, Brand & Communication Consultant at people and brand strategies
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A strong expert brand is more than visibility, it is a growth engine. This article explains why IP experts cannot rely on being “generally known,” but must be known for something specific. When positioning is sharp, others can clearly articulate your expert contribution, which turns recognition into referrals and opportunities. Trust becomes easier to build, both online and in the small analogue moments that shape reputation. And as clarity and consistency align, your brand starts attracting the right clients, referrals, and collaboration partners without additional activity.
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My Favorite from the 📝IP Business Academy Blog
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Using Design Rights to Remove Infringing Products from Online Marketplaces
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This article explains how registered design rights have become a powerful, practical tool for removing copycat products from online marketplaces, not through lengthy court battles, but via notice-and-take-down procedures (NTD). Once a design is registered, its owner has the exclusive right to its appearance; when infringement occurs, the owner can notify the marketplace, which (under EU law and the Digital Services Act) must promptly remove or disable infringing offers. This makes design protection more than just a theoretical right. It becomes a direct lever to control visibility and sales channels.
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My Favorite from the 🎧Podcast IP Management Voice
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#65 IP Management for Scale-Ups
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This podcast episode explains why scale-ups must move from ad-hoc IP handling to a continuous IP management system that grows with the company. It shows how rapid business expansion often outpaces internal IP processes, causing missed patenting chances, know-how loss and avoidable IP infringement risks. Case studies like Graphcore, Lumicks and Skeleton Technologies illustrate how systematic IP management shapes partnerships and competitive advantage.
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In the 📑IP Management Letter series, IP experts find case-based narratives that show how strategic IP management works in real companies and industries, with practical insights they can directly apply to their own portfolios and client work.
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No surprises in royalty streams: the hidden discipline behind Qualcomm’s licensing empire
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Qualcomm doesn’t just sell chips, it built a royalty machine. Through a carefully crafted system of standard essential and implementation patents, paired with clear licensing contracts under FRAND terms, Qualcomm turned its technical innovations into predictable cash flows across the global handset and IoT supply chain.
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