Defence’s 2026 Integrated Investment Program (IIP) does more than identify where government money may be spent. It gives companies a set of demand signals, which can quickly become contested IP territory.
The IIP identifies approximately $425 billion in allocated capability investment over the next decade. For technology businesses, those investment priorities provide valuable signals about the technical capabilities Defence will need repeatedly across platforms, domains and supply chains.
The IP landscape around those capability areas is likely to develop quickly. Once a priority becomes visible, competitors, major defence contractors and overseas suppliers may begin protecting IP, defining integration layers and shaping commercial positions. Australian companies that delay protection risk entering procurement or collaboration discussions with less leverage than their technology deserves.
For businesses supplying into Defence, the opportunity is to identify and protect the technical advantage that will give them leverage in procurement, collaboration and export discussions. This article looks at the issue in three steps: first, the demand signals emerging from the IIP; second, how those signals map to protectable IP; and third, how businesses should protect their position before the market moves around them.
What demand signals is Defence sending?
The IIP names major platforms and infrastructure programs, including submarines, frigates, missile systems, aircraft, armoured vehicles, northern bases and logistics assets. For many technology businesses, the more important demand signals are in the enabling capabilities that recur across those programs.
Several themes appear repeatedly across domains and capability priorities:
- Autonomous and uncrewed systems across maritime, air and land domains, including systems for surveillance, strike, logistics, mine countermeasures and force protection.
- Counter-uncrewed systems, including detection, tracking, command and control, electronic attack, kinetic and non-kinetic effectors, and longer-term directed energy technologies.
- Targeting and decision advantage, including sensor fusion, data processing, command-and-control systems, battle management and decision-support tools.
- Electronic warfare, cyber and resilient communications, including capabilities to detect, disrupt and protect communications, sensors, networks and autonomous platforms.
- Quantum, AI and advanced sensing, especially where those technologies support positioning, navigation and timing, undersea warfare, geospatial intelligence or targeting.
- Guided weapons, sovereign manufacturing and sustainment, including critical components, propulsion, test and evaluation, secure storage, scalable production and resilient logistics.
Across those areas, Defence is signalling demand for technologies that make systems more autonomous, survivable, connected, precise, resilient and scalable.
That is also a useful way for businesses to think about IP in this sector: identify what makes their systems autonomous, survivable, connected, precise, resilient or scalable, then protect the technical features that deliver that advantage.
How do those demand signals map to protectable IP?
In defence technology, the protectable invention is often found below the visible product layer. The product may be a drone, sensor, software tool, communications module, vehicle subsystem or munition component. The protectable invention may lie in the control architecture, signal-processing method, integration pathway, manufacturing process or operating mode that allows that product to perform under defence conditions. For example, a counter-drone company may have protectable IP not only in the physical sensor or effector, but in the way uncertain sensor data is weighted, fused and converted into an engagement decision under latency, power or spectrum constraints.
That distinction is important because defence markets often reward interoperability and adaptation. A narrowly protected product may be overtaken when a platform changes. A well-claimed technical mechanism may continue to have value when applied to a different system or a different application.
For example, the commercially important contribution may be how an autonomous system allocates tasks between vehicles when communications degrade; how a manufacturing process achieves repeatability for a critical component; or how a communications architecture maintains coalition interoperability while protecting sensitive data.
Patent protection can also be particularly valuable where the invention sits at an interface: between hardware and software, platform and payload, sensor and decision system, or local system and wider command network. Those interfaces are often where commercial leverage arises, because they can determine whether a technology can be integrated, certified, sustained or scaled.
An effective patent strategy should also reflect where value is likely to be captured. For some businesses, the best claims may focus on a system architecture or method of operation. For others, the valuable position may be a component design, calibration method, training-data pipeline, manufacturing tolerance, deployment workflow or sustainment process. The right answer depends on how the technology creates advantage and how competitors are likely to design around it.
Finally, it’s good to remember that patent protection is only one part of the strategy. Some commercially valuable know-how may be better kept confidential.
How should businesses protect that IP?
In defence commercialisation, the right time to involve a patent attorney is usually earlier than many businesses expect: once the technical contribution is emerging, and before external disclosure. The technology does not need to be final. It needs to be developed enough for the technical contribution, likely variants and commercial pathway to be understood. A useful trigger is when the team can articulate the technical problem, the proposed solution and why it matters in a defence operating environment.
A patent attorney can then help translate the engineering work into an IP strategy that fits the defence commercialisation pathway. That usually involves working through questions such as:
- Where is the real technical contribution? Is the value in the platform, subsystem, component, software layer, manufacturing process, operating mode or integration method?
- How should the invention be framed? A good filing strategy should capture the specific implementation, while also considering broader methods, architectures, control logic, data flows, interfaces, manufacturing steps and deployment workflows where they are technically supported.
- What needs to be protected before disclosure? Defence trials, tender responses, grant applications, industry challenges, subcontracting arrangements and conference presentations can all require disclosure of technical detail. Filing decisions should be aligned with those events.
- What should be patented and what should remain confidential? Some features may be visible or reverse engineered and are better candidates for patent protection. Other know-how, such as calibration data, manufacturing know-how, datasets, tuning parameters or operational playbooks, may be more valuable as trade secrets if it can realistically be kept confidential.
- Who owns what? Collaborations with Defence, universities, primes, subcontractors or overseas partners can raise issues around background IP, foreground IP, improvements, test results, data and rights to use the technology outside the immediate program.
- Where should protection be pursued? Defence technologies may have relevance in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and allied export markets. Filing decisions should be tied to likely customers, manufacturing locations, collaboration partners and enforcement value.
These decisions should be made deliberately, and early enough to preserve the patent position.
Let’s continue the conversation at ADSTAR
Alister McCowan and I will be at ADSTAR in Adelaide this August. If you are attending, we would welcome the opportunity to meet and hear what you are working on.
Our team works with businesses developing complex technologies across autonomy, AI, quantum, photonics, advanced electronics, sensing, communications, software, manufacturing and engineering systems. We help identify what is protectable and build practical IP strategies.
If you are developing technology for the defence sector, we would be pleased to talk through where the protectable value may sit and how to preserve it as you move toward collaboration, procurement or export opportunities.
