Enabling Digital Infrastructure for the Future of IP Licensing

The EU’s IMPAC3T-IP initiative is redefining how Europe licenses and shares digital IP — from algorithms to AI models. TerraCipher’s platform brings this vision to life, offering the digital infrastructure needed to make modern IP licensing faster, safer, and ready for global collaboration.

Highlights

Part of a future forward looking initiative.

3 minute read

The Challenge

The IMPAC3T-IP team identified a critical problem: licensing digital and non-traditional IP is slow, fragmented, and risk-averse. Universities and SMEs spend months navigating agreements, while valuable algorithms and models sit unused because the tools and governance frameworks to share them securely don’t yet exist.

Their research, published in D3.2: Case Studies and Good Practice Transfer Paths, examined how innovative licensing and data-sharing practices can scale. The findings were clear — the future of technology transfer depends on:

  • Flexible, digital-first licensing systems that can manage diverse IP types.
  • Secure infrastructure for sharing algorithms and datasets.
  • Standardised but adaptable processes that reflect different collaboration contexts — “Classical Plus”, “Crisis”, and “Co-creation”.

That’s where TerraCipher’s platform Shaipup fits perfectly.

The Objective

The task for the broader innovation ecosystem — and the opportunity TerraCipher was built to meet — is to make that vision tangible.

How can research institutions and IP offices translate these “good practices” into real, scalable workflows? How can they license and share non-traditional IP — algorithms, models, or software — in a way that protects ownership, enables access, and reduces friction?

The answer lies in creating a digital layer that bridges legal frameworks, infrastructure, and usability — exactly the kind of infrastructure TerraCipher has developed.

Our Approach

TerraCipher’s platform directly supports the outcomes identified by the IMPAC3T-IP Project.

We’ve built a secure, compliant ecosystem where research code, algorithms, and data-driven tools can be:

  • Hosted safely and version-controlled in the cloud.
  • Licensed with pre-defined commercial or collaborative terms.
  • Accessed by partners through APIs, ensuring usage transparency and attribution.

In practice, this means researchers and institutions can go from a working prototype to a hosted, shareable, and licensable product in a matter of weeks — as demonstrated in recent projects like Carbon Forkprint with the University of Manchester.

This mirrors IMPAC3T-IP’s call for “scenario-based licensing” — enabling flexible pathways for traditional, crisis-driven, and co-created innovation contexts. By embedding licensing logic into the digital infrastructure itself, TerraCipher helps make these scenarios operational, not theoretical.

The Impact

The result is a practical, working example of how the vision behind IMPAC3T-IP can be realised.

Using TerraCipher’s platform, research teams can now:

  • Accelerate translation — moving from prototype to licensable API in under two weeks.
  • Reduce risk — through access control, auditability, and embedded licensing safeguards.
  • Unlock new markets — by making non-traditional IP discoverable and usable by industry.

For universities, this means reduced time-to-market and higher utilisation of their digital IP. For innovation agencies and funders, it means scalable, measurable impact — exactly what IMPAC3T-IP advocates for in its good practice transfer paths.