BPTO Publishes Study on Brazil’s Position in the Global Intangible Investment Landscape

BPTO Publishes Study on Brazil’s Position in the Global Intangible Investment Landscape

On July 8, the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (BPTO) published the study Brazil in the Global Landscape of Intangible Investment, the national supplement to the World Intangible Investment Highlights (WIIH) 2026 report, prepared by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in partnership with Luiss Business School. The publication forms part of the Intangible Assets in the Global Economy project, an initiative aimed at more accurately measuring investments in assets such as software, trademarks, industrial designs, and research and development (R&D)—assets that are playing an increasingly significant role in economic value creation but remain, to a large extent, absent from traditional national accounting statistics.

According to the supplement, Brazil’s intangible investment has followed a distinctive trajectory when compared with that of peer middle-income economies, such as India and the Philippines. While those countries have experienced faster growth in tangible investment, often driven by infrastructure catch-up, Brazil has moved in the opposite direction. Between 2013 and 2023, Brazil’s intangible investment grew at an average annual rate of 2.8%, whereas tangible investment declined by an average of 1.5% per year over the 2011–2021 period.

Although intangible investment has expanded more rapidly than tangible investment in recent years, Brazil’s productive structure remains predominantly oriented toward physical assets. In 2023, intangible investment accounted for 7.6% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), compared with 13.8% for tangible investment—a pattern similar to that observed in other emerging economies and in contrast with countries such as the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, where intangible investment has already surpassed tangible investment. Nevertheless, Brazil ranks among the world’s seven largest economies in terms of absolute intangible investment, reaching US$312 billion in 2023. Moreover, intangible investment as a share of GDP already exceeds the contribution of sectors such as agriculture (6.0%) and financial services (6.6%) and amounts to more than twice the contribution of extractive industries, including mining and oil and gas (3.7%).

One of the report’s main findings concerns the composition of investments in intangible assets. In 2023, both globally and in Brazil, organizational capital accounted for the largest share of these investments, representing 30.5% of the global total and 29% of the Brazilian total. With respect to research and development (R&D) investments, however, a significant difference emerges between the two contexts. Globally, R&D ranks as the second-largest category of investment in intangible assets, accounting for 20.6% of the total. In Brazil, by contrast, it ranks only fifth, representing just 6.6% of total investment in intangible assets.

By contrast, trademarks play a particularly prominent role in the Brazilian economy, ranking second and accounting for 25.3% of domestic intangible investment. This figure is substantially higher than the global average of 14.7% and even exceeds that of the United Kingdom (25.0%), the high-income economy with the highest relative share of trademark investment. This strong domestic emphasis on trademarks, combined with the scale of Brazil’s intangible economy, places the country as the world’s fifth-largest investor in trademarks in absolute terms, behind only the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany.

The report also highlights that artificial intelligence (AI) is driving investment in both physical infrastructure and intangible assets, including data, software, and workforce skills. While the United States accounts for 62% of global private-sector investment in AI infrastructure, Brazil remains at an early stage of AI adoption but has a strategic opportunity to strengthen its competitiveness through increased investment in these intangible assets.

Finally, according to the report, 71.5% of Brazil’s intangible investment was not captured by the National Accounts System in 2023—a proportion exceeding the average recorded across the 29 economies covered by the WIIH. Had these investments been fully incorporated into the official statistics, Brazil’s investment rate would have increased from 16.4% to 21.4% of GDP. In light of these findings, the BPTO advocates improving the methodologies used to measure intangible investment and revisiting Brazil’s traditional economic policy framework, emphasizing intellectual property as a strategic asset for enhancing national competitiveness. The Office further notes that the persistent perception of intellectual property as a bureaucratic cost, rather than as an economic asset, continues to constrain its potential for value creation and access to financing.

The report can be accessed through the link: WIIH2026_Suplemento_Brasil_INPI.pdf.

Note: For quick release, this English version is provided by automated translation without human review.