PONS IP, a global consultancy firm specialising in Intellectual Property, has announced the creation of a new department called “Technological Innovation Consultancy” made up of professionals from the fields of digital law, economics, science and intellectual property to expand its portfolio of IP-relates services through this newly created pioneering area in Spain.

With this decision, PONS IP aims to provide a global response and add value throughout the innovation cycle to the growing demand from clients on key issues such as participation in R&D projects funded by the European Commission through the Horizon Europe and Digital Europe programmes, comprehensive advice on intellectual property activities to medium-sized companies that do not have their own legal team, as well as comprehensive advice aimed at venture capital firms and business angels, among other players in the innovation ecosystem.

This new milestone advances the consolidation of PONS IP as the leading global IP consultancy firm in the sector in Spain, a new positioning announced in 2022 and which will offer new services linked to the development of new methodologies for the valuation of technology and knowledge management, or the preparation of technology reports in innovation-intensive sectors such as biotechnology, telecommunications, artificial intelligence, mobility or new forms of energy.

The new Technological Innovation Consultancy team has been proposed by the General Manager of PONS IP, Nuria Marcos and will be led, in this first stage, directly by the strategic advisor of PONS IP Luis Ignacio Vicente, one of the current benchmarks in Spain in the knowledge of innovation and technology transfer with almost 35 years of experience managing R&D&I for Telefónica and other companies, together with Eric Maciá, Senior Legal Counsel with more than ten years of experience as a legal professional with a background in engineering, specialising in intellectual property, information security, negotiation, ICT contracting, technology and alternative dispute resolution. The coordination of the work group will also include other professionals such as Isabel Marco, PhD in Chemistry and with nearly 20 years of experience in the field of patents and innovation, who will lead the Technology Surveillance area.

Amaya Mallea will be the director of Legal Consultancy in R&D&I. She is a lawyer with 23 years of experience collaborating with companies, universities, technology centres and other public research entities in their technology transfer processes and legal protection of R&D&I during their innovation generation cycles.

Violeta Arnaiz, a lawyer specialising in intellectual property, will be in charge of the technological intellectual property area to help PONS IP clients address the challenges that are already being created by new digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence.

This new organisation will also have a data management advisory team with the vision of going beyond the usual approach by addressing issues such as synthetic data or industrial non-personal data. This team will be led directly by José Carlos Erdazoain, Of counsel at PONS IP.

For Luis Ignacio Vicente, “with this new business venture, we have set ourselves the challenge of helping companies in technology centres in the management of their innovation, incorporating intellectual property as a tool to support decision making and the valuation of the results of their R+D+I. The data are clear: in Spain today we have 23% fewer small companies performing R&D than in 2010. If we look at Europe, 10% of startups have filed patents in their early stages and 44% by the time they reach large funding rounds. We need to help European companies to capitalise on knowledge through proper management of their intellectual property rights”.

For Nuria Marcos, General Manager of PONS IP, with the creation of this area “we are not renouncing the excellent management of patents and trademarks, but we want to take advantage of this knowledge to position intellectual property at the centre of the companies’ business strategy. Until now, we looked at what our competitors in Europe were doing, but now we are starting to lead the way in Spain. It makes no sense to talk about technological autonomy in our country if we do not focus on generating this technology in Europe and protecting and transforming it into value in an efficient way through intellectual property”, expressed the head of the IP consultancy firm.