EPO annual meeting focuses on innovation financing; NatWest TMT head Neil Bellamy and Inngot CEO Martin Brassell talked about IP as collateral for lending

Image courtesy EPO

The European Patent Office (EPO) held its 19th annual co-operation meeting with member states on 18 June 2025 in Reykjavík, Iceland.

This year’s event centred on the future of innovation and intellectual property (IP) financing in Europe, bringing together representatives of the EPO’s 39 member states, the European Innovation Council, startups, public and private investors, lenders, and IP finance experts.

Meeting participants reflected on how to best harness the strengths of the European Patent Network to follow up on the recommendations in the 2024 Draghi and Letta European Commission reports which explored financial mechanisms to help tech start-ups scale and improve Europe’s competitiveness.

In his opening remarks, EPO President António Campinos emphasised the importance of strengthening IP-backed financing:

“Bringing technologies to market requires a system that capitalises on intellectual property as a legitimate financial asset. This is the first time we, as a network, are collectively addressing the challenges around innovation financing. It’s an opportunity to map best practices and explore the pressing questions that many member states across Europe face. Our goal is to work with industry and policymakers to build a trusted, investor-ready IP ecosystem – one that helps inventors turn ideas into investable, market-ready solutions.”

Participants were welcomed by Sigrún Brynja Einarsdóttir, Permanent Secretary at Iceland’s Ministry of Culture, Innovation and Higher Education, and Borghildur Erlingsdóttir, Director General of the Icelandic Intellectual Property Office.

The programme featured two panel sessions: one exploring perspectives and real-life experiences from tech investors and start-ups, and the other focusing on the role of national IP offices and concrete actions to support IP financing. Participants also engaged in discussions with external experts on the use of AI in patent office operations and potential areas for future joint activities.

Inngot CEO Martin Brassell and Neil Bellamy, Head of Technology, Media and Telecoms at NatWest, talked through the NatWest IP-backed loan, launched in January 2024. This uses Inngot’s online IP identification, valuation and collateral-suitability checking tools to work out a suitable loan-to-value figure for IP which innovative companies are wanting to use as collateral for loans.

The NatWest High Growth IP Backed loan was, and as far as we are aware still is, the first commercially available loan targeting scale up companies which allows them to use their intellectual property and related intangible assets as collateral for bank borrowing. Software, patents, copyrights, trademarks, registered designs and other intangibles can be valued and used as collateral. Find out more about IP finance here.