In the past couple of decades, the number of filed European patents related to defence has risen dramatically. 10,582 individual patent family applications were published between 2000 and 2004, whilst 28,307 were published in the last four years. The areas of “wireless communications” and “aircraft and helicopters” showed the largest jump, largely due to recent developments in drones and cyber security technologies.
UK Government’s Investment in Innovation
To encourage the development of these types of novel technologies in the UK, the Spring Statement, led by Rachel Reeves, included a substantial commitment towards innovation for military purposes. Specifically, Reeves has announced that the government will set aside £400 million for innovative technology and has promised to prioritise UK tech firms, in particular start-ups and SMEs.
This funding arrives on the back of other initiatives already established in the UK government’s effort to drive innovation. In December, the Defence Secretary, John Healey, revealed plans to develop a new Defence Industrial Strategy, to be published in late Spring of this year. The strategy will outline the government’s efforts to prioritise defence as one of the eight “growth-driving” sectors. This includes a commitment to supporting UK businesses, creating new venture opportunities through partnerships with the Ministry of Defence, increasing jobs in the defence sector across the UK, and focusing on novel and early-stage technology. A scheme created specifically to link the Ministry of Defence with such technology is the Defence and Security Accelerator, which seeks out and funds innovation to aid UK defence and security.
But as the government calls for a defence ecosystem characterised by growth and innovation – and provides substantial funding to drive this growth – important considerations arise in how defence manufacturers can best manage their intellectual property.
Balancing Protection and Privacy
One obvious consideration is how to handle potentially sensitive, or secret, subject matter and how to protect inventions that might have national security implications. A common fear when pursuing patent applications for military technologies is the risk of Section 22 directions. This is where the UK Patent Office prevents the publication or dissemination of applications containing sensitive subject matter. Another consideration is how best to commercialise technology whose primary use will be by governments during times of conflict.
In practice, these sorts of Section 22 directions are often avoidable. The UK Patent Office’s 2023 filing data indicates that only 35 directions under Section 22 were issued in that year despite a large number of filings by defence companies (BAE Systems alone filed 116 new applications in 2023).
A large reason for this is that technologies originally intended for military applications often turn out to have substantial other, e.g. civilian, use cases. With careful consideration it is often possible to protect an underlying invention that can be applied to these other use cases without publishing any sensitive information. One example of such a technology is the GPS system, which started life as a purely military technology before being opened up to civilian use. By focusing on these alternative uses, it is often possible to obtain meaningful, and commercially valuable, protection, without risking a Section 22 direction.
Building A Strategy for Defence Tech Firms
To summarise, due to the increased funding being made available, the next few years offer the opportunity for substantial innovation in the defence sector. Companies involved in this innovation should be careful to protect their intellectual property while bearing in mind the unique complexities in this area.
Many of the potential pitfalls can be overcome with careful strategizing. If managed properly, the military technologies of this decade could well turn into ubiquitous civilian technologies in the next decade or even sooner. Companies with a strategy that effectively protects their intellectual property in the short term will be well placed to reap the benefits in the long term.
