Why Intellectual Property Is Critical to Innovation

Intellectual property is critical to innovation because it creates incentives to invest, protects inventors’ work, enables commercialization, and ensures ideas can be transformed into scalable solutions that drive long-term economic and societal progress.

Innovation Depends on Incentives and Protection

“Innovation is critical to how we solve humanity’s most important problems. If there are no patents, there is no incentive to innovate.”

This conviction underpins the work of Tamar Gomez, co-founder of Ankar, and frames this episode of Movers & Shakers.

Identifying a Broken Path From Idea to Patent

Tamar’s career spans Imperial College, where she studied game theory, and Palantir, where she learned how small, high-performing teams transform data into impact.

It was at Palantir that Tamar met her co-founder Wiem Gharbi and identified a systemic problem: the process of turning an invention into a patent was slow, fragmented, and discouraging for inventors.

Why Broken IP Systems Slow Innovation

When the path to intellectual property protection is unclear or inefficient:

• Inventors struggle to secure recognition
• Investment becomes riskier
• Valuable ideas remain underutilized

A broken IP system reduces the incentive to innovate, especially in complex and capital-intensive fields.

Streamlining the Intellectual Property Lifecycle With AI

Ankar was created to address this challenge by redesigning the entire IP lifecycle.

Its technology supports:

• Identifying novelty in inventions
• Drafting and prosecuting patents
• Detecting potential infringements

By leveraging artificial intelligence, Ankar simplifies complex legal processes and empowers inventors to protect and monetize their ideas more effectively.

Protecting Inventors to Accelerate Progress

As Tamar emphasizes, innovation fuels progress—but only when inventors are protected.

By fixing the flow from idea to patent, intellectual property systems can better support:

• Scientific advancement
• Entrepreneurial risk-taking
• Long-term technological progress

Ensuring recognition and protection for inventors ultimately benefits society as a whole.