Everyday IP: The Hidden IP In Smart Cities

There was a time when our collectively imagined future involved flying cars and robot butlers. Today's projections for tomorrow are more practical and, thanks to an array of digital technologies communicating with one another, actually achievable. After all, there is no need to soar over the streets if traffic jams are a thing of the past.

Smart cities are a promising promenade of current and forthcoming advances built on a foundation of Intellectual Property (IP) protections. By defending and rewarding ingenuity, IP is building our future one destination at a time.

The transportation and infrastructure of tomorrow

Perhaps the most talked-about innovations in smart cities are also the most archetypically futuristic: autonomous vehicles. From a relatively slow start, this patent category rapidly picked up speed, with subsectors like software now expanding most significantly as companies race to achieve safety and sustainability through algorithms,