Full coverage: Intellectual property

When singer Mariah Carey launched her own cream liqueur, she chose the name Black Irish to reflect her ancestry. The brand is now live in the US but, although made in Ireland, it can't be sold in the EU yet as a group of Irish drinks veterans own the trademark for their own Black Irish drink.

Ten years ago, Dublin student Ronan McGovern left for MIT on a Fulbright scholarship. He has just returned to Ireland after selling his start-up to a leading engineering multinational.

As it expands aggressively outside the US, the design-centred social network has a new fashionable item to pin to its board: the green jersey tax structure.

The latest US multinational to switch from a double Irish to a green jersey tax structure, Airbnb has been accused of exacerbating Dublin’s housing crisis – but when Covid-19 hit, it had to negotiate with its own landlord.

New documents prepared by the online questionnaire firm in Dublin provide a rare level of detail in the relocation of intellectual property to Ireland common to countless tech multinationals. Meanwhile, the more discreet Mentor Graphics is preparing to repatriate billions out of Shannon.

So many legal punches have landed on Mallinckrodt that it is facing a knock-out blow at any point. While the disputes engulfing the manufacturer of several controversial drugs unfold in the US, they all link back to the group’s corporate structure and intellectual property vehicles here in Ireland.

The 2016 state aid decision and yesterday’s court judgment quashing it book-end four years that have seen hundreds of billions worth of intellectual property routed to Ireland. The case has influenced where multinationals locate the source of profits, and this influence is set to continue.

An Irish subsidiary of professional software multinational Cadence recently disclosed new balance sheet data in routine filings associated with a merger. They showed its assets had just jumped by $4.7 billion.

Using a string of complex corporate transactions, an Irish subsidiary of the software giant Workday managed to pull off quite the feat: it made a $5bn gain, before making it disappear.

Experience has thought me that IP is an asset worth protecting for every entrepreneur – not just tech giants or songwriters.