Full coverage: Intellectual property

A referendum on Ireland fully joining the EU’s Unified Patent Court was pulled last year. The new coalition has made no commitment to rescheduling the vote.

Changes in tax law on both sides of the Atlantic have seen the Irish subsidiaries of multinationals pay more to access American intellectual property. But from the US side, a lot of this revenue is unaccounted for.

As head of Ireland for Bird & Bird, Michael Finn is tasked with delivering the law firm's five-year strategy. With a global revenue target of €1 billion, the lawyer says there is no limit to growing out the Dublin team — carefully.

Royalties are one of the channels multinationals use to funnel billions of euro in profits to Ireland every year. In the fight with market countries for this slice of the cake, Revenue has just lost a battle before the Tax Appeals Commission.

EasyGroup claims the Swords-based vehicle rental firm ER Travel has breached its world-renowned family of brands including easyHotel.com, easyCar, easyFood, and easyCleaning.

Alphabet group companies in Dublin have paid nearly €10bn in dividends to their US parents in the past two years. Much like the hiring spree that preceded them, they were part of “a different economic reality”.

Why is the energy drinks global giant expanding its Co Kildare factory at a time of high inflation and rising corporation tax rates? The answer lies in the fine print governing tax deductibles.

For years, the double Irish scheme siphoned multinationals’ profits to offshore islands. Now their intellectual property makes half of all corporate profits in Ireland tax-deductible. Ahead of the budget, new data and analysis reveal what drives the corporation tax bonanza.

Moderna claims its patented mRNA innovations have been breached by Pfizer, the US pharma giant with a big footstep in Ireland. It is one of several patent infringement suits lodged by the US biotechnology firm.

Vertiv, the US electrical technology group, acquired E&I Engineering for $1.8 billion in 2021. More than half of this value was for intangible assets, which the group can now amortise against taxable profits.