European IP Helpdesk Bulletin / December 2023, Societal Value Creation

We are living in times of global crises and conflict. Given a widening wealth gap between high and low-income countries, increasing scarcity of resources and unequal access to medicines, novel approaches are needed to ensure intellectual assets and technologies are fully exploited to solve current and future challenges. However, the contrary is often the case, and existing assets remain underused. Moreover, the COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine have revealed that chocks in our systems create new technology needs and gaps in our access to necessary technologies in Europe.

This Bulletin, jointly developed by the European IP Helpdesk and the Impact Licensing Initiative, sheds light on different initiatives, strategies and practices aimed at using novel technologies and IP more effectively for enhanced societal value creation.