Against an international backdrop in which businesses win market share largely
as a result of the innovative content of their products, the capacity of
companies to innovate has become vitally important from a strategic point of
view.
An obvious consequence of this is that companies need to take appropriate
steps to protect their intellectual property rights and assets, and prevent
others from appropriating themselves of their technologies, solutions,
processes and products and making unlawful use of them.
With Research & Development expenditure amounting to 1.7 billion euro in 2005
(15.2% of the value of production), Finmeccanica is one of the foremost
players in this arena of competition.
The Group has thus launched an Intellectual Property Governance programme
aimed at ensuring maximum protection for its intellectual capital, which
consists of the accumulated inventions, technologies and solutions generated
by the industrial intellect of its companies.
The programme is complemented a pro-active recognition of the key role played
by intellectual property in the new global economy, in which the theatre of
competition has shifted away from the production of goods and services towards
the production of know-how, and in which intangible assets predominate as a
source of economic value and competitive edge for businesses.
Within this context, the industrial economy - with particular reference to
businesses with a high technological content - is increasingly becoming a new
economy based on knowledge and driven by innovation, in which intellectual
property rights can be used directly to achieve competitive advantages or
assure credibility in the eyes of the financial markets.
The Finmeccanica Group sees the defence of its intellectual property and the
capitalisation of its intangible assets as factors of undisputed strategic
importance, which have become central to its business activities and
technological innovation processes, as a means of increasing the Group's
competitiveness and competing for new and larger shares of the market.
