Beyond the Patents: Who Owns Battlefield Know-How?

Defence Partnerships, Technology Transfer and the Emerging Market for Operational Knowledge

Defence partnerships have followed a familiar pattern for decades. One party developed technology, another acquired access to it, and lawyers focused on allocating rights to patents, software and technical documentation. The assumption behind most of these arrangements was straightforward: the most valuable intellectual assets could be identified before a project began.

The experience of Ukraine’s defence sector challenges that assumption. In many contemporary defence programmes, some of the most commercially significant assets do not (yet) exist at the time an agreement is signed. They emerge later, through deployment, adaptation and operational use. Engineers refine systems, operators develop new methods of use, and software teams respond to evolving threats. Over time, this process generates knowledge that cannot easily be found in a patent portfolio, a licensing agreement or a technical specification.

This presents a challenge that traditional intellectual property frameworks were never designed to address. Patent legislation identifies inventors. Copyright identifies authors. Technology transfer agreements allocate ownership of existing intellectual property with considerable precision. They are far less effective when dealing with knowledge created after deployment, even where that knowledge becomes one of the most valuable outcomes of the collaboration.

As international defence cooperation involving Ukraine expands, questions that once occupied the margins of technology transactions are moving closer to the centre. Who owns operational learning? How should rights to improvements be allocated? Can battlefield-generated know-how be licensed, transferred or valued independently from the technology that produced it? The answers may shape intellectual property strategies and future defence partnerships, investment decisions and technology transfer models.

The Asset That Existing IP Frameworks Struggle to Capture

One of the enduring misconceptions in innovation-driven industries is that intellectual property and competitive advantage are largely the same thing. Patents, copyrights and trade secrets undoubtedly matter. Yet some of the most valuable business assets have historically existed outside formal intellectual property registries.

The semiconductor industry provides a useful illustration. Manufacturers may operate within comparable patent landscapes and use similar equipment while producing dramatically different results. The difference often lies in process knowledge accumulated through years of experimentation, optimisation and operational experience. Competitors can study the technology, but reproducing the know-how is considerably more difficult.

The aerospace sector offers a similar lesson. Aircraft can be reverse-engineered. Decades of production expertise, testing protocols and engineering practices generally cannot. In advanced industries, the true barrier to replication often lies in the knowledge required to make that technology reliable, scalable and commercially viable.

Defence technologies are increasingly displaying the same characteristics. A patent may describe the architecture of a drone or an electronic warfare system, but it reveals little about the operational learning generated after deployment. It does not show which configurations improved survivability, which software modifications reduced vulnerability to countermeasures or which maintenance procedures lowered failure rates during sustained use. Those insights emerge through operational experience rather than formal invention.

Existing legal frameworks address this reality only partially. Article 39 of the TRIPS Agreement and the EU Trade Secrets Directive recognize the need to protect commercially valuable undisclosed information. Battlefield-generated know-how, however, does not always fit comfortably within traditional trade secret concepts. It evolves continuously, often reflecting contributions from multiple participants and may acquire commercial significance long after the underlying technology was developed. The result is a growing disconnect between how innovation is created and how rights to innovation are allocated.

From Operational Feedback to Commercial Value

Not every battlefield lesson becomes a commercial asset. Most operational observations remain confined to a particular mission, environment or technical problem. Their value ends where the specific deployment ends. Know-how begins where experience becomes transferable.

A technical insight capable of improving future products, reducing development cycles or increasing operational effectiveness across multiple deployments has a fundamentally different economic character. It ceases to be merely a lesson learned and becomes a source of competitive advantage.

This distinction is particularly important in defence technologies, where deployment increasingly forms part of the innovation process itself. Operational use generates feedback, feedback drives modifications, modifications create new knowledge. Over time, that knowledge influences products far beyond the programme that generated it.

Investors and engineers often view this process differently. Engineers focus on how knowledge is created. Investors focus on whether it can be retained, transferred and scaled. Sophisticated buyers rarely question whether know-how exists. The more important question is whether a company can identify it and demonstrate control over it.

Some of the most valuable know-how within technology businesses resides in engineering teams, operational practices and accumulated experience. Patents and technical documentation often capture only part of that value. For this reason, the ability to institutionalise know-how often matters as much as the ability to generate it.

For Ukrainian defence technology companies seeking investment or international partnerships, the ability to demonstrate control over operational know-how may become almost as important as ownership of intellectual property itself.

The Ownership Question

Ownership becomes important the moment know-how acquires measurable commercial value.

Many defence collaborations begin with a relatively clear allocation of rights. One party contributes technology, another contributes engineering capabilities and operators provide access to deployment and feedback. The complexity emerges later, when the knowledge created through that collaboration proves more valuable than the assets originally contributed to it.

This dynamic is becoming increasingly common in projects involving Ukraine. International manufacturers supply platforms, Ukrainian companies adapt technologies, operators generate continuous feedback and engineers implement improvements. Over time, the resulting product may differ substantially from the system that originally entered deployment.

Traditional intellectual property concepts provide only partial answers. Patent law focuses on inventorship. Copyright focuses on authorship. Battlefield-generated know-how often emerges through a combination of technical development, operational experience and iterative refinement. Individual contributions may be difficult to isolate even where the resulting knowledge becomes commercially significant. As a result, disputes regarding know-how are often resolved through contracts rather than intellectual property statutes.

Technology lawyers are familiar with the distinction between background intellectual property and foreground intellectual property. The framework works reasonably well for patents, software and technical documentation. Operational know-how is rarely so straightforward. Many of the most valuable lessons generated through deployment originate from existing technology, depend on operational experience and ultimately contribute to future product improvements.

A modification developed during deployment may later become part of a product marketed globally.   Operational insights generated by one participant may influence future product generations used by others. Once commercial value emerges, assumptions that appeared reasonable at the beginning of a collaboration can become a source of significant tension.

Why Existing Defence Contracts May Be Insufficient

Most defence contracting models were developed for an environment in which innovation followed a relatively predictable trajectory. Contracts focused on ownership of patents, software and technical documentation because those assets could be identified and allocated at the outset of a project.

Operational know-how rarely occupied the same position because it rarely represented the principal source of value. That assumption is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

In many contemporary defence programmes, commercially significant knowledge is created after deployment rather than before it. The resulting learning influences software development, hardware modifications, maintenance protocols and future product design. Yet contractual frameworks often remain focused on ownership of technology rather than ownership of the knowledge generated through its use.

The closest analogue can be found in the long-running debate over technical data rights in defence procurement. Governments and contractors have spent decades negotiating access to technical information because both sides recognised a simple commercial reality: control over critical information frequently translates into control over future opportunities.

Battlefield-generated know-how may produce similar tensions. Increasingly, the question is not simply who owns the technology, but who may use the operational learning created around it.

Technology Transfer Is No Longer a One-Way Process

For decades, technology transfer in the defence sector followed a familiar pattern. Technology moved from developer to recipient. The recipient gained manufacturing capabilities, technical expertise or market access. The value of the relationship was generally associated with the technology being transferred.

Ukraine is exposing the limits of that model. International defence companies entering the Ukrainian market are not engaging solely with production capacity or engineering talent. They are operating within an environment that continuously generates operational knowledge about modern warfare. Technologies may arrive in Ukraine, but the learning generated through deployment increasingly travels in the opposite direction.

A platform developed abroad may evolve through battlefield experience accumulated in Ukraine. Operational feedback may influence software architecture, hardware modifications, deployment methodologies and future product generations. In some cases, the technology transfer itself proves less valuable than the operational learning that follows it. The commercial significance lies not in the transfer of technology, but in the knowledge created through its use.

For Ukraine, this creates an opportunity that extends beyond manufacturing and procurement. The country is becoming a source of operational know-how with relevance far beyond its borders.

The Emerging Market for Know-How

Ownership determines who controls an asset. It does not determine what that asset is worth. For battlefield-generated know-how, valuation may ultimately prove more important than ownership itself.

The commercial significance of know-how has long been recognised in industries where competitive advantage is shaped as much by execution as by innovation. In many technology transactions, commercial value is driven less by registered rights than by the expertise required to turn those rights into marketable products.

Battlefield-generated know-how shares many of the same characteristics. Its value rarely lies in a specific piece of information. Rather, it lies in the ability to improve future products, accelerate development cycles, reduce operational risk or create performance advantages that competitors struggle to replicate.

Investors generally assume that know-how exists. Their focus is on whether the organisation can identify it, retain it and translate it into repeatable commercial results.

The companies that benefit most may not be those with the largest patent portfolios. They may be those most effective at converting operational experience into knowledge that can be retained, reused and commercialised long after a particular deployment has ended.

What Defence Companies Should Be Thinking About Now

The legal framework governing battlefield-generated know-how is still evolving. That does not reduce its importance. If anything, it increases it.

In our experience, the most difficult disputes in technology collaborations rarely arise because parties disagree about ownership of existing intellectual property. More often, disagreements emerge when a project begins to create value that nobody anticipated at the time the agreement was signed.

For defence companies, the immediate challenge is recognition. Many organisations devote considerable attention to patents and software while paying far less attention to operational learning. Yet that learning may ultimately become one of the most valuable assets within the business.

Equally important is governance. Companies that identify, structure and institutionalise battlefield-generated know-how today are likely to be better positioned when future investment, acquisition or technology transfer opportunities arise.

Conclusion: The Next Competition May Be for Knowledge

For decades, defence innovation was measured primarily through technology. Better platforms, more sophisticated systems and larger research budgets were viewed as the principal drivers of competitive advantage.

Those assets remain important. What is changing is where a growing share of value is created. The experience of Ukraine’s defence sector suggests that some of the most commercially significant assets emerge after deployment rather than before it. Operational use generates insights, improvements and capabilities that rarely appear in patent portfolios yet frequently influence future technologies, future partnerships and future markets.

For businesses participating in defence innovation, the discussion ultimately concerns how value is created, retained and commercialised. Long-term advantage is likely to favour organisations that treat operational learning as a strategic asset and manage it accordingly.

Ukraine has become one of the most significant environments for defence innovation in the world. The technologies being developed and deployed today will continue to evolve. The knowledge created through that process may prove even more important. As battlefield-generated know-how acquires greater commercial value, access to that knowledge may become a defining feature of future defence partnerships.