Against an international backdrop in which businesses win market share largely as a result of the innovative content of their products, the capacity of companies to innovate has become vitally important from a strategic point of view.
An obvious consequence of this is that companies need to take appropriate steps to protect their intellectual property rights and assets, and prevent others from appropriating themselves of their technologies, solutions, processes and products and making unlawful use of them.
With Research & Development expenditure amounting to 1.982 billion euro in 2009 (11% of the value of production), Finmeccanica is one of the foremost players in this arena of competition.
The Group has thus launched an Intellectual Property Governance programme aimed at ensuring maximum protection for its intellectual capital, which consists of the accumulated inventions, technologies and solutions generated by the industrial intellect of its companies.
The programme is complemented a pro-active recognition of the key role played by intellectual property in the new global economy, in which the theatre of competition has shifted away from the production of goods and services towards the production of know-how, and in which intangible assets predominate as a source of economic value and competitive edge for businesses.
Within this context, the industrial economy - with particular reference to businesses with a high technological content - is increasingly becoming a new economy based on knowledge and driven by innovation, in which intellectual property rights can be used directly to achieve competitive advantages or assure credibility in the eyes of the financial markets.
The Finmeccanica Group sees the defence of its intellectual property and the capitalisation of its intangible assets as factors of undisputed strategic importance, which have become central to its business activities and technological innovation processes, as a means of increasing the Group's competitiveness and competing for new and larger shares of the market.
