Intellectual property assets — patents, trademarks, registered designs, and copyright assignments — appear in official registers. Those registers record who filed, who holds the right today, and whether the right is in force. What they do not record automatically is who controls the entity that holds the right, or whether that entity has pledged, licensed, or encumbered the asset in a jurisdiction outside the one where it was registered.
Control over an IP asset is therefore a two-layer question. The first layer is the register: is the right valid, in whose name, and in which territory? The second layer is corporate: who controls the registered holder, and what constraints on the asset appear in that holder's corporate record? Both layers are addressed in a structured IP asset report.
What the sources showRegistered owner name, filing date, registration number, current legal status (in force / lapsed / opposed), and recorded assignments or licences. Source: national and regional IP registers · verified 2026-03-20. Condition of accessMost national IP registers are publicly searchable without registration. Regional systems — EUIPO, WIPO ROMARIN, EPO Espacenet — are open and free of charge. What a structured report adds is cross-register reconciliation, translation, and identification of encumbrances filed in secondary jurisdictions. What the sources do not showUnregistered rights (trade secrets, unregistered design rights, common-law marks), contractual licences not recorded in the register, and pledges filed under commercial law rather than IP law. Corporate layerThe registered holder's ownership structure and any security interests over the asset as a whole are established from corporate and commercial registers, not from the IP register itself.National and regional IP registers are the primary source for registered intellectual property. They record the right as a legal object: its number, class, territory, filing and registration dates, and the name of the current holder.
Assignments — transfers of ownership — are recordable in most registers. A recorded assignment updates the holder's name on the face of the register. An unrecorded assignment may be valid between the parties but is invisible to a third-party search.
Licences are recordable in some registers and not in others. Where recordation is optional, a licence that has not been filed does not appear. The absence of a licence record is not proof that no licence exists.
Opposition and cancellation proceedings appear in most registers as a status flag. The flag shows that a challenge is pending; it does not show the merits or the likely outcome.
Regional systems cover unitary rights. A right registered at EUIPO is a single right covering all EU member states. A right registered nationally in each member state is a bundle of separate rights — each searchable in its own national register.
The IP register names the holder. It does not describe who controls that holder.
Control is established from corporate records: the shareholder register, the list of directors, and — where available — the beneficial ownership register. In jurisdictions where beneficial ownership is not publicly disclosed, the chain of control is traced to the point where the public record ends, and that endpoint is stated explicitly in the report.
Security interests over IP assets are filed in different places depending on jurisdiction. In some systems, a pledge over a trademark or patent is recorded in the IP register itself. In others, it is filed in a commercial pledge register, a UCC filing system, or a notarial record. A search of the IP register alone does not establish whether the asset is encumbered.
Licence agreements that are not recorded in the IP register may appear in the holder's filed financial statements — as a revenue line, a contingent liability, or a note on intangible assets. Filed accounts are therefore a secondary source for IP-related obligations.
An IP portfolio held by a single corporate entity may span dozens of jurisdictions. Each national or regional right is a separate legal object, searchable in a separate register, subject to separate renewal obligations, and potentially subject to separate encumbrances.
A cross-border IP report maps the portfolio against the registers where rights are recorded. For each right, the report states: registration number, territory, current status, recorded holder, and any recorded assignments, licences, or proceedings. Where a right has lapsed or been cancelled, that is stated.
The report does not assess the commercial value of the portfolio, the strength of any individual right, or the likelihood of success in pending proceedings. Those are legal and commercial judgements outside the scope of a register-based report.
Not all intellectual property is registered. Copyright arises automatically in most jurisdictions without registration. Unregistered design rights exist in several systems. Trade secrets are not registered anywhere.
Unregistered rights do not appear in any public register. Their existence, ownership, and scope are established from contracts, correspondence, creation records, and other documentary evidence — not from official registers.
A register-based IP report covers registered rights only. Where the brief indicates that unregistered rights are material, the report states which categories of unregistered right are potentially relevant and identifies the documentary sources that would need to be reviewed. It does not itself review those documents.
IP registers record the right as filed and as maintained. They do not record everything that affects control over the asset.
The following are not visible in IP registers:
Where a right has been assigned but the assignment has not been recorded, the register still shows the previous holder. The report flags this risk where the filing history shows a gap between the stated transaction date and the recordation date.
Where the corporate record of the holder is in a jurisdiction that does not publicly disclose beneficial ownership, the report states the last identifiable level of the ownership chain and the reason the chain ends there.
The ceiling of what the sources allow is stated before payment.