Rewarding innovation on the battlefield. Ukraine continues to reform intellectual property rights in the Ministry of Defense. What it involves

The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine is developing mechanisms to encourage innovation and reward Ukrainian military inventors for technological solutions that can provide Ukraine with an advantage on the battlefield. To this end, the Ministry of Defense has developed a draft law and an instruction that introduces a unified mechanism for identifying intellectual property (IP) in the Defense Ministry system. These are the points of a large-scale reform of intellectual property protection, according to which the rights to defense technologies created in the Armed Forces will be assigned to the Ministry of Defense and will receive proper protection. These changes are expected to be implemented in the coming months.

This was stated by Oleksandr Kubrakov, Advisor to the Minister of Defense and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the We Build Ukraine think tank, during the conference “Reform of the Intellectual Property System in the Defense Sector: First Results and Vision for the Future.”

He emphasized that until recently, there was no institution or official responsible for this within the Ministry of Defense. Moreover, as of 2023, the agency did not own a single patent. 

“That is, the state spent resources on developing technologies, but did not retain ownership of them. Therefore, in fact, it has lost or given them to third parties,” Kubrakov said.

A large-scale reform of intellectual property in the defense sector is intended to remedy this. Its goal is to ensure the protection of intellectual property rights, since despite a fairly significant number of technical solutions developed by the military that already allow Ukraine to act more effectively on the battlefield, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) still does not have a single patent for them. 

At the same time, Kubrakov noted that the reform is already underway and began with the creation of institutions. Thus, in August 2024, the Main Department of Military Justice established an intellectual property department. It is planned to create a separate department on its basis, which will be directly subordinate to the relevant Deputy Minister of Defense. 

Kubrakov explained that the newly created department is already implementing reform measures. It is creating a regulatory framework for intellectual property in the Defense Ministry. At the same time, work is underway to form the Ministry of Defense's intellectual property portfolio. 

Key areas of reform: 

• Creation of a regulatory framework for IP;

• Launching a Single Window for inventors in the military

• Establishment of an IP licensing mechanism for the introduction and scaling up of production of relevant models of weapons and military equipment;

• Regulation of international transfer of defense technologies. 

“We conducted a study on the state of intellectual property and found that Ukraine has no IP management structure in the Ministry of Defense. In the period 2013-2023, the main customer of research and development, the Ministry of Defense, registered zero intellectual property objects. Billions have been invested, but the state, which is supposed to own and manage intellectual property, has nothing. But researchers had 512 patents. The officials who controlled what the performers did had 388. Moreover, there are already cases where certain high-quality technological solutions have been lost because the Ministry of Defense did not have intellectual property rights to them,” he explained. 

The main component of the reform is a draft law on the so-called “service works” of military personnel. If passed, it will finally establish that IP objects created during military service belong to the state, represented by the Ministry of Defense, and the state will be obliged to pay royalties to military inventors. 

According to Kostin, the draft law was created together with the Ukrainian National Office of Intellectual Property and Innovation (UKRONOIPI), and on February 12, the Institute of Rulemaking issued its opinion on it. The draft law will be submitted to the Verkhovna Rada in the near future (mid-February - ed.). 

“The Ministry of Defense has completed its task, and now the ball is in the Parliament's court. It will legalize everything that happens in the army. The Armed Forces of Ukraine is the first army in the world to fight with what it invents. Therefore, we are going through this path for the first time,” he emphasized.  

How will the intellectual property system work and what is the “single inventor window”?

Kubrakov explained that as part of the IP reform, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine has already developed the Instruction on the acquisition, exercise and protection of intellectual property rights. The Instruction regulates the activities related to the identification of intellectual property in all units tasked with creating defense innovations. This includes both research institutions of the MoD and the Armed Forces and specialized innovative military units. According to the instruction, the MoD IP unit selects appropriate ways to protect IP, assigns rights to it to the MoD, and ensures proper management of such rights. Kostin added that the Instruction is currently at the final stage of approval and will create a single unified mechanism for identifying intellectual property rights.

“This is a roadmap that shows how certain objects will be analyzed, who will be sent to them, how they will be processed and decisions will be made on their relevance. We understand that not all solutions may be interesting here and now. For example, certain solutions cannot be implemented now, but they may become available in the future. But the state (the Ministry of Defense) will have the rights to these solutions. If the Ministry of Defense is not interested in these objects, then the military innovator will have the right to dispose of them,” Kostin explained.

He also emphasized that the Instruction provides for the creation of a “Single Window” for military inventors, regardless of their place of service and job responsibilities. This regulates the activities of field workshops and individual inventors outside of specialized innovation units. Once they have created an invention, they will be able to offer their solutions to the MOD. And after verifying the value of such an invention for defense needs, they will receive a reward. The next step is to scale up the proposed solution and transfer the experience to the troops, and then to license the production of the corresponding solution by the defense industry. 

“It is important that the resources we include in the Single Window already exist, we are not creating a platform from scratch. There are only a few steps left to implement it. For example, we are using an existing web portal managed by the Innovation Department of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which, in turn, has a methodology for analyzing technological solutions offered by manufacturers of weapons and military equipment. We are now finalizing the methodology for the military and adding additional functionality for them,” Kostin added.

According to him, it will also provide an opportunity to receive feedback on the application of the solution - how best to use it. For this purpose, specialists in the study and implementation of military experience will also work with the solution.  Taking into account the feedback received, the issue of launching licensed production and scaling of the relevant technological solutions will be resolved. 

At the same time, the legal mechanism for licensing the production and scaling of technologies owned by the Ministry of Defense has already been established by the IP Department - the relevant pilot project was approved by an order of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine in early February 2025.

“We must give the inventor confidence that he will receive fair remuneration for his intellectual work, that the state is able to effectively dispose of his technology and disseminate it in the military. The Single Window meets these challenges,” Kostin said.

As for the transfer of international technologies, the Ministry of Defense experts note that Ukraine is currently receiving not only finished weapons, but also technologies from partner countries, which is also an unprecedented and new challenge for both our country and partners. 

In order to effectively address the transfer and protection of technologies received by Ukraine, as well as to address the transfer of Ukrainian technologies to partner countries in the future, the MoD IP Department presented its vision of a two-level reform: 

1) Departmental level - creation of a MoD working group on defense technology transfer, which will summarize and streamline the practice of technology transfer and military-technical cooperation within the MoD and the Armed Forces, as well as develop proposals for regulatory changes; 

2) Interagency level, the so-called “Office of Defense Technology Transfer” - the introduction of interagency cooperation between the MoD and other ministries, public authorities, law enforcement agencies in matters of defense technology transfer, both in terms of import and export, as well as the creation of a single, transparent entry point for foreign technologies in the defense sector and the formation of a center of competence on this issue.

Finally, Kostin added that if the current pace of work is maintained, these changes will be in place within two months.