The European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP) increasingly emphasises European Design Authority, meaning the ability to develop and evolve defence products independently. Control over intellectual property supports this and may become relevant for access to EU defence funding. According to the authors’ own analysis, non-EU applicants hold about 60–70% of EP patent publications in unmanned systems and selected Electronic Warfare technologies, with particularly large shares from the U.S. and China. The talk presents these patent landscape findings and what they mean for the European defence industry. It then shows how companies can identify key enabling technologies, build patent portfolios around them, protect them across platforms, manage IP in collaborations and reduce depend ...