by Emilio Berkenwald

General interest, UncategorizedDecember 17, 20250 comments 0 Likes

Innovation and development: how patents strengthen Argentina’s strategic industries

In the context of a macroeconomy seeking to regain predictability and a country with a solid base of strategic industries, new investment opportunities for entrepreneurs and companies are beginning to emerge. For technology-based businesses in particular, identifying, protecting, and leveraging their innovations can become a concrete competitive advantage in the market.

Registering a patent in Argentina allows companies to protect an intangible asset that can define their competitive position in the medium and long term. The patent system provides a legal tool that grants a temporary monopoly on exploitation and, at the same time, sends a message to the market that innovation has value and that there is interest in defending it. A patent is granted for 20 years from the date of filing the application and allows the owner to decide on the exploitation of their technology, negotiate licenses, or seek partners to commercialize it.

Strategic, thriving, and innovative sectors—where patent protection is essential—include agribusiness, pharmaceuticals, energy, and high technology. Argentina has a comparative advantage in biotechnology applied to agriculture, where genetic innovation, the development of bio-inputs, and precision solutions are at the heart of the business. In the pharmaceutical field, the country has national pharmaceutical companies with large installed capacity and a track record in R&D. In the energy sector, the shift toward clean technologies and more efficient processes is opening a race to register industrial innovations.

For its part, the knowledge sector is showing remarkable growth, and its share of the total economy is becoming increasingly significant. In 2024, exports of services related to this sector grew by 15.5% over the previous year, reaching US$8.927 billion. Today, the knowledge industry competes with the automotive industry for third place among the country’s export complexes, representing 9.2% of Argentine exports—only behind the agricultural and petrochemical sectors. The knowledge economy includes innovations related to information technology and software, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, among others.

In these industries that generate technology-based businesses, the same logic applies: to anticipate is to protect value. Patents not only offer concrete protection against unauthorized exploitation, but they also provide peace of mind to be able to make strategic decisions about the future of an invention.

Protecting innovation in our country should not be thought of solely as a defensive action, but as a central component of any business, investment, expansion, and development strategy. Argentina has the talent, infrastructure, and industrial capacity to be a major player in the coming decades. For that potential to translate into competitiveness, it is essential that entrepreneurs and companies have adequate protection for their innovations through patents within an ecosystem that favor obtaining and defending intellectual property rights.