How the state can help you to create and protect unique assets

Increasingly, firms are investing in intellectual property rather than assets like land or oil, which are subject to value fluctuation. The state’s multibillion-euro research infrastructure helps to make this happen, writes Graham Clifford

Dr Alison Campbell, director of Knowledge Transfer Ireland

‘An investment in knowledge pays the best interest,” uttered one of the US founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin. The inventor and scientist, who came up with creations such as the lightning rod, the glass harmonica and bifocal glasses, understood the importance of researching, developing and then protecting his inventing processes.

Intellectual property (IP), that intangible asset which results from creative and research-focused endeavours, can indeed pay the best interest if the beholder recognises its ...