From Protection to Profit By Saurabh Barar, IP Attorney and Head of Legal Operations, Legal Tech Meet

Sep 30

4 min read

The rise of IP commercialisation, and why it sits at the heart of Code to Capital 2026 For years, IP sat in the back office. File the patent, register the trademark, put the certificate in a folder. Founders, investors and even law firms now ask a different question. Not “how do I protect this idea?” but “how do I turn it into a revenue line?”

That question is IP commercialisation: turning protected ideas, brands, content and data into income, funding and enterprise value. In my view, it is becoming one of the most interesting business categories of this decade.

What It Actually Looks Like

An owner of IP has a handful of routes. License it for royalties. Sell or assign it. Franchise the brand. Place it in a joint venture. Borrow against it. Or build a new company around it. The routes are not new. What is new is the market around them: buyers, pricing tools and capital that were thin a decade ago.

Why It Is Trending Now

Think about what a company is actually worth today. A generation ago, most of a big company’s value sat in factories, stock and equipment. Ocean Tomo’s 2025 study finds that about 92 percent of the market value of the S&P 500 now sits in things you cannot touch: brands, software, data, patents and know-how. In 1975 that figure was 17 percent.[1] When nearly all of a company’s value is an idea, it is natural to ask what that idea can earn.

Investors have noticed. Research by the European Patent Office and the EUIPO found that startups holding both patents and trade marks were up to 10.2 times more likely to raise early funding.[2] Music shows the same thing at scale. Global recorded music revenue reached US$31.7 billion in 2025, its eleventh straight year of growth[3], and behind every stream sits a right that someone owns and licenses. Four trends stand out.

1. IP as collateral. Lenders, insurers and investment funds are increasingly recognising patents, trademarks and other IP assets as potential sources of financial value, enabling businesses to leverage their intellectual property for financing, risk assessment and investment.

2. Royalties as an asset class. Music catalogues, media rights and licensing streams now attract institutional money, and online marketplaces trade them.

3. AI on both sides. AI tools now scan markets for infringement and help value portfolios, while AI-generated content is redrawing questions of inventorship, ownership and personality rights.

4. Trust as a condition of capital. Data protection and cyber readiness are now read alongside IP in due diligence. India’s DPDP obligations become fully enforceable around May 2027.

India is well placed. It ranks sixth in the world for patent filings, and resident applicants now account for about 60 per cent of them. The next step is turning that filing strength into licensing income and financing.

Why This Is Our Focus

If ideas are where the value now sits, then the people who own, license, finance and defend those ideas help decide where capital goes. Founders, IP counsel, investors and technologists all meet at the point where an idea becomes an asset that earns. That point is IP commercialisation, which makes it the natural centre of a summit about innovation and investment.

How It Connects to Where Innovation Meets Investment

Between an idea (the code) and money (the capital) sits a bridge made of ownership, rights, valuation and trust. Where Innovation Meets Investment is really a description of that bridge. Strong IP makes innovation investable. Investors make IP worth more than a certificate. The Summit follows the same arc: Idea, Build, Protect, Commercialise, Scale, Capital.

The Summit Agenda: Four Panels on the Bridge

The Code to Capital Summit 2026 takes place on 23 October 2026 at IMC Mumbai, organised by Legal Tech Meet, an initiative of Indevo Group. After the opening keynotes, four leadership panels each take up one of the trends above.

Leadership Panel I

From Code to Capital: Scaling Innovation into Global Markets

The trend: taking protected IP across borders through licensing, partnerships and market entry.

Leadership Panel II

From Screen to Stream: The New Media IP Landscape

The trend: media rights as recurring income, and identity in the age of AI. Covers copyright, broadcasting, OTT, music and personality rights.

Leadership Panel III

The Intelligence Ledger: Ghost in the Patent Machine, AI & Future of Invention

The trend: who owns what AI helps create, and what that is worth to a buyer or a lender.

Leadership Panel IV

The Compliance Countdown: How Data Privacy Works Inside Organisations

The trend: trust as a condition of capital. Covers DPDP readiness, the six-hour security clock and cyber security.

The Startup Showcase (Investor & Live Feedback) then closes the loop, putting emerging ventures in front of investors for candid, real-time feedback on their business and their IP.

We spent a decade teaching people to protect their IP. The next decade is about teaching them to profit from it.

Code to Capital is an invitation-based executive forum for IP counsel, founders, investors, policymakers and technologists. Participation is by registration and seating is limited. If you work where innovation meets investment, I would be glad to continue this conversation with you in Mumbai.