The UAE has entered the top 25 of WIPO’s Global Innovation Index 2026, while India leads Central and Southern Asia and has outperformed its level of development for 16 consecutive years. This article looks at the detail behind those rankings and at why the ownership, registration, licensing and financing of intellectual property matter for businesses operating across both markets.
WIPO’s Global Innovation Index 2026, now in its 19th edition, places the United Arab Emirates in the global top 25 for the first time. The UAE is 25th among 139 economies, up five places from 30th. India holds 38th place, leads Central and Southern Asia, and has performed above its level of development for 16 consecutive years.
For businesses with operations, investors or counterparties in both countries, the headline rankings matter less than what sits behind them. Several of the report’s findings bear directly on how intellectual property is created, owned, financed and moved across borders.
What does the Global Innovation Index measure?
The Index is not a count of patents or research spending. It scores 139 economies on 79 indicators grouped under seven pillars: institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, market sophistication, business sophistication, knowledge and technology outputs, and creative outputs. The first five are treated as innovation inputs and the last two as outputs. That split is the key to reading the UAE and India results, because the two economies sit on opposite sides of it.
The global backdrop
The top of the table is stable. Switzerland is first for a 16th consecutive year, followed by Sweden, the United States, the Republic of Korea and Singapore, and no new economy has entered the top 15.
The wider environment is one of heavy investment in technology. Corporate R&D among the world’s top spenders reached a record USD 1.5 trillion. Venture capital deal values rose by around 28% to USD 510 billion, with AI accounting for 53% of global deal value in 2025 and 77% in the first half of 2026, although the number of deals fell for a fourth consecutive year. Value is concentrating in fewer, larger bets, which raises the importance of the assets investors are actually underwriting: patents, software, data and brands.
Why is the UAE’s move into the top 25 significant?
The UAE’s economy profile shows it ranked first in the world on entrepreneurship policies and culture, finance for start-ups and scale-ups, tertiary inbound mobility, and green-field R&D and high-tech foreign direct investment. It is 2nd for business environment, 2nd for the share of research talent employed in businesses and 3rd for graduates in science and engineering. At pillar level it ranks 9th on institutions, 13th on human capital and research, 13th on infrastructure and 14th on market sophistication.
WIPO describes the UAE as the Gulf economy furthest along in turning these foundations into broader innovation activity, pointing to high-tech manufacturing (48th), patent families (41st) and FDI inflows (20th). Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait are also advancing as the region pursues knowledge-based diversification.
The report is equally clear about what comes next. The UAE ranks 12th on innovation inputs but 42nd on outputs, and WIPO places the Gulf economies in the “high-input, lower-output” part of the innovation landscape. The task it sets for them is to convert capacity and infrastructure into knowledge creation, technology, intellectual property and globally competitive firms.
The same gap appears in the IP indicators. The UAE ranks 6th globally for brand value and 19th for IP receipts, yet 106th for trademark filings by origin, 111th for industrial designs, 82nd for patents and 73rd for utility models. Brands and commercial value are being built faster than they are being registered at home.
India: more with less
India’s profile is the reverse. It ranks 49th on inputs but 25th on outputs, and the report identifies it as one of 21 innovation overperformers relative to level of development, four more than last year. India and Vietnam have now appeared in that group for 16 years running, the longest records in it.
India ranks first in the world for ICT services exports, 4th for late-stage venture capital deals and 13th for intangible asset intensity, which helps it to 15th in knowledge and technology outputs. It is 16th for patents by origin and 65th for trademarks by origin, well ahead of the UAE on both. WIPO lists India among seven long-term middle-income climbers, with China, Vietnam, Türkiye, the Philippines, Morocco and Indonesia.
Four Indian clusters sit in the global top 100: Bengaluru (25th), Delhi (27th), Mumbai (43rd) and Chennai (79th). Mumbai and Chennai both climbed this year, Mumbai on the back of a 38% rise in PCT applications. India’s input pillars remain much weaker than its outputs, with institutions at 60th, infrastructure at 62nd and business sophistication at 63rd.
Where do the two economies meet?
The two countries appear side by side in one of the report’s more notable findings. WIPO’s new indicator for green-field R&D and high-tech FDI, based on announced investment projects, records close to 6,000 such projects in 2025, roughly one in three of all green-field projects worldwide. The top ten destinations attracted 58% of them, and the United States, India and the UAE led. On the source side the top ten origin economies generated 70% of announcements, and the United States alone accounted for one in four.
India and the UAE are also among the report’s 16 “global investment hubs”, economies above the world average for both inbound and outbound projects. India and China are the only two that are not high-income economies.
A research centre, AI facility or high-tech plant is more than a capital flow. It carries patents, software, designs, data, trade secrets, brands and know-how across a border. The UAE brings capital, a pro-entrepreneurship policy environment, infrastructure and talent attraction; India brings digital services capability, engineering depth and a large venture ecosystem. A business that combines them creates and moves intellectual property across two legal systems.
What does the report say about IP in science-based ventures?
This year’s special theme examines “deep science” start-ups and spinouts built on scientific and engineering breakthroughs. More than 30,000 have been created since 2000, with a combined enterprise value of USD 7.6 trillion. Its findings on IP apply well beyond that sector.
- IP is the verifiable asset. Where revenue is years away, patents are often the only verifiable asset a venture has, and they are used to secure financing, partnerships and licences before a product earns anything.
- IP follows maturity. Almost half of deep science start-ups (49.7%) hold patents, against 15.4% of other start-ups, and the share rises from around 43% at seed stage to 69% at late stage.
- IP defines the terms of collaboration. Ventures license to incumbents, form joint ventures, are acquired or work within consortia, and each boundary “requires explicit IP terms or else the structure stalls”.
- Institutions affect adoption. Patent holding among deep science start-ups rises from 37.6% in lower-middle-income economies to 50.6% in high-income ones, which the report links to institutional capacity.
India’s own figure, about 39.8%, is below the global average of 49.7%, however above the average when compared with its income group (37.6%). That alone does not support firm conclusions, but it suggests room to strengthen IP strategy in Indian science-based ventures that may seek UAE capital or partners.
IP as a financing tool
The report puts the global value of intangible assets at USD 80 trillion in 2024, a 13-fold increase over 25 years. The examples it highlights are drawn from other markets: China, where patent and trademark pledge financing reached CNY 854 billion (USD 118 billion) in 2023; the Republic of Korea, where IP-backed lending passed KRW 3 trillion in 2022; Singapore, whose financing scheme shares 80% of loan-loss risk with lenders; Japan, which is tightening disclosure on IP and intangible-asset investment; and the United Kingdom, where collateral protection insurance supports lending against patent portfolios.
The common thread is that lenders accept IP where valuation, disclosure and risk-sharing arrangements exist. For a UAE–India business that may one day borrow against its IP or present it to investors, the precondition is the same in both countries: clean title, accurate registers and properly documented security.
Technology transfer and licensing
The report is direct about friction in technology transfer, noting that “unclear publication rights, restrictive equity and royalty clauses, and opaque licensing terms can stall spinouts”. No single licensing template is universally suitable, and terms that work for a university spinout in one jurisdiction may need adapting to the regulatory and commercial environment of another.
How does this play out between the UAE and India?
Two common structures show where the issues arise. In the first, a company develops technology in India and commercialises it in the UAE. It has to decide where patents are filed, how the brand is protected in the UAE, whether employees and contractors have assigned their rights, and how the licence between the Indian and UAE entities is framed. In the second, a UAE company funds R&D in India. The questions become who owns what the Indian operation produces, how improvements are treated, and what restrictions apply to moving the technology out.
Three points of law tend to decide these cases:
- Rights are territorial. Both countries are members of the Paris Convention, the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) and the Madrid Protocol. A single PCT application can be taken into the national phase in both countries, and a single Madrid application can designate both, but each office examines and decides for itself, so protection must still be obtained in each. Designs fall outside both systems and are filed nationally. The UAE’s industrial property law says so directly, industrial property obtained in the UAE is independent of that obtained for the same invention in other states (Article 4). The governing statutes are, in the UAE, Federal Law No. 11 of 2021 on the Regulation and Protection of Industrial Property Rights (patents, utility model certificates, industrial designs, integrated circuits and undisclosed information) and Federal Decree-Law No. 36 of 2021 on Trademarks, and in India, the Patents Act 1970, the Trade Marks Act 1999 and the Designs Act 2000.
- Indian-resident inventors face a foreign-filing restriction. Under section 39 of the Patents Act 1970, a person resident in India may not make, or cause to be made, a patent application outside India without a written permit from the Controller, unless an application for the same invention was made in India at least six weeks earlier and no secrecy direction under section 35(1) has been given on it (or all such directions have been revoked). Contravention has consequences under sections 40 and 118 of the Act. The restriction does not apply to an invention first filed outside India by a person resident outside India (section 39(3)). Where the inventors are resident in India, however, a UAE parent planning to file first in its own name should confirm whether that filing could be treated as one caused by an Indian resident, and should consider a foreign filing permit or an Indian first filing.
- Ownership does not always follow payment. Under section 17 of the Copyright Act 1957, the author is the first owner of a work, but an employer is the first owner of a work made in the course of employment under a contract of service or apprenticeship, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary (section 17(c)). A contractor is not an employee, so for software and most other works the contractor remains the first owner until rights are assigned. Commissioned photographs, paintings, portraits, engravings and cinematograph films follow a different rule (section 17(b)). Under section 19 of the same Act, an assignment must be in writing signed by the assignor and must identify the work, the rights assigned, and the duration and territorial extent of the assignment. If no period is stated, it is deemed to be five years, and if no territory is specified, the assignment is presumed to extend within India only (sections 19(5) and 19(6)). Software written by Indian contractors for a UAE group is a common place where this surfaces.
Practical questions for UAE–India structures
- Ownership. Who owns IP developed by teams, contractors or joint-venture entities working across both jurisdictions, and is that documented in a way that is effective in each?
- Registration. Does the filing strategy for patents, trademarks and designs follow where the product is developed, manufactured and sold?
- Licensing and technology transfer. Do scope, territory, exclusivity, royalties, sublicensing, improvements, confidentiality, exit and dispute resolution work together across the two markets?
- Data and software. Where value sits in code, datasets and platforms, are ownership and permitted use addressed expressly?
- Financing and diligence. If the IP may later serve as security or be examined by investors, do the chain of title and the registers in each country support it?
The filing data suggests practice is already shifting. Global PCT applications reached 275,900 in 2025, up 0.7%. UAE filings rose 31.7%, the largest percentage increase among mid-sized filers, while India’s fell 32% after a run of exceptional years, which the report describes as a normalisation.
Conclusion
The UAE’s entry into the top 25 and India’s sustained overperformance both reflect deliberate investment in innovation capacity. WIPO’s diagnosis for the Gulf is that strong foundations now need to become outputs, including intellectual property. For India, the profile points the other way: outputs are running ahead of the institutions, infrastructure and business R&D that support them.
Between the two, a growing share of commercial value sits in technology, brands and data. Who owns that value, where it is protected, how it can be licensed and whether it can be financed are questions best settled when a structure is set up, not after a dispute has begun.
Part of ATB Legal’s Intellectual Property practice.