INTA 2026: Intellectual Property as a Strategic Driver of Foreign Investment  

Over 400 individuals and more than 200 organizations from Latin America registered to attend the INTA Annual Meeting in London this year, underscoring the region’s strong presence at the global IP conference, even though the event was held outside the Americas. This reflected the importance that Latin American practitioners placed on intellectual property, as well as their eagerness to exchange best practices with peers from around the world.

The session Building IP-Ready Economies: The New Currency of Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) brought together Sabastian Gomez, Chief Representative Officer for Latin America and the Caribbean at INTA, Courtney Fingar, Senior Advisor of World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies (WAIPA), Gustavo Morais, Partner at Dannemann, Siemsen, Bigler & Ipanema Moreira, and Samuel Stone, Deputy Director, Europe, Trade, and Multilateral at the UK Intellectual Property Office. The panel explored how governments and investment promotion agencies leveraged intellectual property to attract investment.

IP is becoming a core factor in investment decisions

Foreign investors are no longer driven only by labour costs, tax incentives, or market size. Increasingly, they assess whether a country offers legal certainty, innovation capacity, skilled talent, and a reliable system to turn ideas into commercial value. In this context, IP has moved from a technical legal area to a central element of economic competitiveness.

Beyond laws: how IP systems function in practice

Modern IP frameworks are judged less by what is written in legislation and more by how they work in reality. Investors look for predictable regulation, fast and high-quality granting of rights, credible enforcement, and strong judicial systems.

Key concerns include:

-Stability and consistency of IP policy
- Effective enforcement and injunction mechanisms
- Protection of trade secrets
- Alignment with international standards
- Efficiency of courts and administrative agencies

For innovation-driven industries such as pharmaceuticals, AI, advanced manufacturing, and digital services, IP is often the foundation of business value.

National IP strategies and investment promotion

Across Latin America and other regions, governments are increasingly integrating IP into national innovation and investment strategies. IP is no longer treated as an isolated legal function, but as part of a broader economic system involving trade, industrial policy, and technology development.

Investment promotion agencies, IP offices, and innovation ministries must now coordinate more closely. Investors expect a "single point of contact" that understands both business needs and the IP environment.

Lessons from international experience

Countries that successfully attract high-value investment tend to combine strong IP systems with coordinated institutional strategies:

Singapore: IP policy is embedded in national economic strategy and actively supports investment attraction.

Ireland: A highly effective investment promotion agency helped build a global hub for knowledge-based industries.

United Arab Emirates: Regulatory innovation has positioned it as a leader in digital and emerging technology sectors.

These examples suggest that IP competitiveness depends on both legal strength and institutional coordination.

Trade-offs, coordination, and new frontiers

For companies, key due diligence questions remain freedom-to-operate, enforcement reliability, and protection of confidential know-how. At the same time, governments are exploring new areas such as IP-backed finance to help startups and scale-ups access capital using intangible assets.

In that sense, the most competitive economies are those that treat intellectual property not as a legal formality, but as economic infrastructure. For Latin America, integrating IP into investment promotion and innovation policy represents a strategic opportunity to attract higher-value, innovation-led foreign investment.

Author: Crystal Lo