At the international CEIPI Summer School 2026 in Strasbourg, the IP Expertise Demand Index was presented in a setting that could hardly have been more appropriate. CEIPI, the Center for International Intellectual Property Studies at the University of Strasbourg, has long stood for European IP education, international research, and the connection between IP law, IP management, and innovation practice. It was precisely in this environment that the core message of the Index became visible: the key question is not only where patents are filed today, but where IP expertise will be needed tomorrow.

The IP Expertise Demand Index, developed and observed by IPBA Connect for around 20 years in parallel with the Master for IP Law and Management and the Open Foresight Board of the IP Business Academy, addresses a structural issue that is becoming increasingly important for Europe’s innovation system. Demand for IP support does not arise evenly, synchronously, or always where established IP service markets are already well organized. It emerges where new technologies, new business models, new regulatory requirements, and new forms of value creation meet.

From IP Activity to IP Expertise Demand

Traditional IP indicators often look at existing IP activity: How many patents are filed? Which companies are particularly active? Which technical fields are growing? The IP Expertise Demand Index starts earlier. It asks: Where is decision pressure emerging? Where is orientation missing? Where do startups, universities, scale-ups, research institutions, investors, and industrial partners need answers to IP-related questions, even though the corresponding advisory offers are not yet clearly visible, positioned, or accessible?

The presentation therefore begins, quite deliberately, with digital transformation. Digital patents, computer-implemented inventions, and data-driven business models show that the logic of IP is shifting. In more traditional industries, the link between technology, product, and IP right was often relatively direct. A technical solution was developed, patented, incorporated into a product, and used to protect against imitation. In digital value creation systems, this logic has not disappeared, but it is no longer sufficient.

Digital business models are built in layers: physical product, sensors and actuators, connectivity, analytics, and digital services. Customer value often no longer arises from the product alone, but from the interaction between these layers. This also changes the IP question. The issue is not only how to protect a technical invention, but how to understand where control, differentiation, market access, and willingness to pay arise within a digital ecosystem.

Why Digital Business Models Change the IP Question

The examples in the presentation make this shift tangible. Spotify does not simply protect “music streaming”; it protects elements of user experience, personalization, taste profiles, and the reliable delivery of digital content. Sonos combines hardware sales with digital service functions and multiroom user experience. Google creates technological footprints in new ecosystems, for example in the automotive sector through content, vehicle data, and voice-based interaction. Kindle shows how an apparent device becomes part of a broader platform, contract, and IP ecosystem. Mastercard illustrates interoperability as a strategic asset. Philips and Signify demonstrate how a technological transformation, the LED revolution, evolved into a new interaction between R&D, patent cooperation, licensing, and “light as a service.”

These cases reveal a common pattern: IP is no longer merely a downstream legal safeguard. IP becomes an instrument for designing, securing, and scaling business models. This is exactly where the gap measured by the Index becomes relevant.

The demand from users of the IP system often arises earlier than the classical offer of IP service providers. A startup does not necessarily begin by asking: “Which patent application do we need?” It asks: “What can we show investors without losing control?” A university does not only ask: “Is this invention patentable?” It asks: “How can research become a transferable value proposition?” A scale-up does not merely ask: “Do we have freedom to operate?” It asks: “What IP position do we need to secure partnerships, financing, market entry, and scaling?”

These are IP questions, but they do not always appear as classical IP mandates. They arise before the patent application, before the licensing negotiation, before due diligence, and sometimes even before the product itself has been clearly defined. For this reason, they are often recognized too late by established IP service providers. Not because these providers lack competence, but because the traditional logic of the service market is structured differently.

The Structural Origin of the IP Expertise Gap

Patent attorneys, lawyers, and IP consultants are usually organized around recognizable, formulable, and billable tasks: patent drafting, prosecution, opposition, freedom-to-operate analysis, contract drafting, portfolio review, licensing, enforcement, or dispute resolution. The new demand, however, often arises in a phase in which companies do not yet know what kind of IP problem they actually have. They have a strategic need, a structuring need, and a translation need. They need someone who can connect the language of technology, markets, financing, regulation, and IP.

This is the systematic explanation for the recurring divergence between demand for IP expertise and the available supply of IP expertise. Innovation moves along new control points. Service markets move along established categories. Whenever a new technology or a new business model emerges, value creation changes first. Only later do the terminology, routines, mandate structures, and advisory formats stabilize. The gap between these two movements is the IP expertise gap.

The IP Expertise Demand Index makes this gap observable. It is therefore a leading indicator for Europe’s innovation system. Its purpose is not merely to identify “hot topics.” Its real value lies in identifying fields where demand for IP orientation, IP strategy, and IP management is increasing before the market for such services is fully developed.

Why the Index Matters for Europe’s Innovation System

The example of quantum technologies illustrates this approach particularly well. Quantum is not one single IP field. The presentation breaks it down into distinct demand areas: quantum computing hardware and control, quantum software and hybrid computing, quantum simulation in chemistry and life sciences, quantum communication and secure networks, post-quantum security migration, quantum sensing, timing and metrology, and quantum enabling technologies and supply chains. Each of these areas has different users, different IP questions, different signals, different timing, and different positioning opportunities.

This distinction is methodologically important. A broad label such as “quantum” is too vague for IP expertise. Demand does not arise at the level of the buzzword. It arises where concrete decisions must be made. Should a university publish or patent? Should a startup protect its hardware architecture, keep calibration know-how secret, or secure data interfaces? Does a company need support with post-quantum migration, standards, export controls, or supply chains? Are the relevant actors already visible, or are ecosystems still forming?

This is where the Index becomes a strategic market signal. For Europe, this is particularly important because the European innovation system is often strong in research, public funding, and technological development, but not always equally strong in translating those strengths into IP positions, business models, and scalable control points. When the Index shows that a field combines high investment, strong policy momentum, technological uncertainty, and weak visibility of specialized IP expertise, this is not just an observation. It is a warning signal about a possible weakness in the innovation system.

A Market Signal for IP Experts, Patent Attorneys and Advisors

For consultants, patent attorneys, IP strategists, and other IP experts, the Index is therefore more than an analytical tool. It is a positioning tool. It shows where expertise will be needed, where users are looking for orientation, and where existing services are not yet sufficiently visible. Those who take these signals seriously can sharpen their own positioning: not as generic “IP experts,” but as specialists for specific emerging demand fields.

This may mean focusing on IP for digital use cases. Or on IP strategies for data-driven MedTech systems. Or on robotics, GreenTech, quantum, post-quantum security, Industrial IoT, AI-native products, or platform economies. The decisive point is not to chase every trend. The decisive point is to identify where users in the innovation system need IP expertise but do not yet know how to search for it, purchase it, or embed it internally.

This also changes the role of the IP profession. IP experts are not needed less; they are needed earlier, more strategically, and in a more integrated way. They must not only explain IP rights, but structure decision spaces. They must not only address legal risks, but make economic options visible. They must not only react once a mandate is formulated, but help turn a diffuse innovation challenge into a manageable IP question.

The IP Expertise Demand Index 2026 provides a compass for this task. It connects innovation dynamics, patent activity, investment signals, regulatory pressure, user needs, and visibility gaps in the advisory market. In doing so, it shows where Europe must mobilize IP expertise in order to translate technological strength into economic capability.

The final insight is simple but far-reaching: IP expertise is part of Europe’s innovation infrastructure. It helps determine whether research becomes value creation, whether technology becomes market position, and whether European strengths can become global competitiveness. The Index shows where this infrastructure is under pressure, where it must grow, and where new opportunities emerge for IP experts to become relevant.

Not by speaking louder about patents, but by explaining more clearly which IP decisions matter for which innovation actors, at which point in time, and under which strategic conditions.