In March, IP Europe, a coalition promoting the innovative power of patents, appointed Niklas Lagergren to replace Patrick McCutcheon (who served in the role from July 2022 to September 2024) as the organization’s Secretary General (March 9, 2026 IP Europe press release). The coalition’s Chair is Nokia’s Vice President, IP Policy, and Advocacy Head, Collette Rawnsley (whom we also recently interviewed: February 18, 2026 ip fray article).
At the time of his appointment, Mr. Lagergren also noted that there are “far more similarities than differences between copyright and patents”, as both protect valuable innovation and give people and companies incentives to invest in R&D, create, and innovate.
Interestingly, Mr. Lagergren’s first-ever topic when he joined the Motion Picture Association in 2002 was the beginning of the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED), which was first implemented in 2004. There is now a chance that the regulation is going to be revised, and IP Europe spoke out about recommendations made by the European Commission (EC), which it believes could “significantly weaken patent protection and enforcement” (February 16, 2026 IP Europe press release).
Any amendments to the IPRED would have major implications for the EU’s competitiveness, its potential to be a hub for innovation, and its attractiveness for research. In addition, the Unified Patent Court (UPC) has only recently started its work and is establishing high-quality jurisprudence. While IP Europe’s new Secretary General has not yet had much interaction with the UPC, he emphasizes the coalition’s support of the court system.
Mr. Lagergren recently sat down with ip fray to discuss his priorities as IP Europe’s new Secretary General, as well as his views on how Big Tech is viewing and interacting with IP in the EU, and the coalition’s views on patent pools and SMEs.
Mr. Lagergren is a Swedish national who first moved to Brussels in the 1990s from Geneva, where he grew up. His first stint in IP was at the Motion Picture Association, which he joined in 2002, and where he worked for 11 years as a director and then Vice President of EU Affairs, dealing with media policy and copyright issues. Motion Picture Association is a trade association that represents the major film studios of the U.S., which also recently took an interest in a major patent dispute between Tesla, InterDigital, and Avanci in the UK (April 16, 2026 ip fray article).
He then moved to 21st Century Fox in 2013, where he helped open their Brussels office and became Senior Vice President of Government Affairs for EMEA, before becoming Vice President of Analysis and Strategy at Disney in 2019 (after Disney acquired Fox). His latest role was Advisor at the Association of Commercial Television and Video on Demand Services in Europe, which he started in June 2024.
While his background is rich in copyright, he says he often felt what was missing was experience in industrial IP (patents and trademarks), so having this opportunity at IP Europe is “very exciting”.
Big Tech’s attempts to weaken IP
“IP is the lifeblood of the entire system,” Mr. Lagergren says.
He notes that often people dismiss IP when actually it’s a system that continues to prove itself, and eventually gets people to an agreement on the terms and conditions. “From 2G to 5G, standard-essential patents (SEPs) have supported the creation of a standardisation ecosystem that has delivered incredible value,” he adds.
With 30 years of his career spent in the EU’s capital of Brussels, Mr. Lagergren has developed a strong understanding of the “Brussels approach” to IP. One trend he has seen occur (in both patents and copyright) is Big Tech’s increasing attempts to weaken IP that isn’t its own.
Mr. Lagergren suggests it could be that they are “eminently” vertically integrated companies, building their strength through proprietary standards, acquisition, and sometimes vertical integration, “rather than being innovative themselves”. So, this leaves the EU in worse shape (January 1, 2026 ip fray article) when it comes to innovation and IP.
Reflecting generally on the EU political system, including the European Parliament, Mr. Lagergren believes it has become very “fragmented”.
In the copyright world, this situation was exacerbated by what he refers to as “fair-weather” IP holders, which were initially pro-IP, before they switched sides when they realized there were other models they could use to defend their assets — including promoting proprietary technologies, product bundling, and vertical integration. “They became a lot more lukewarm on IP,” he says.
Mr. Lagergren’s priorities moving forward
The new IP Europe Secretary General’s priorities include raising awareness of the importance of patents, patent pools, and open technology standards for European competitiveness and protecting Europe’s global technology leadership in the areas where it’s still strong. Mr. Lagergren also said he wanted to work closely with IP Europe SME Chair Rubén Bonet to promote the importance of patents and patent licensing for SMEs and startups, in particular, given their critical role as the “backbone” of the European economy.
Looking to the future, Mr. Lagergren says that it would be “unrealistic” to think that Europe’s competitiveness (amongst other markets) would be based on cheap labor. “Our ideas and our intellectual property are basically the only possible basis we have for our future competitiveness,” he says.
IP Europe believes that, especially recently, the U.S. has been more pro-IP than the EU. The coalition wants more companies – and policymakers – in Europe to see IP as an enabling framework.
The EU has one of the best IP protection and enforcement systems in the world and should continue leveraging this to build its innovation capacity and become an influential innovation hub, he says. “IP isn’t just about defending what you own, but a framework that helps you align innovation, investment, and tech adoption,” Mr. Lagergren adds.
ip fray also brought up AI. While IP Europe believes that it is an important topic, it is not currently one of its biggest priorities. “There is a lot being said about AI and its arrival meaning the end of everything – including that we would need to fundamentally review the whole nature of copyright and patents in the IPRED,” Mr. Lagergren says.
But, he emphasizes, there is no justification for AI to just break up an entire system which – as noted by Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné (the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for Prosperity and Industrial Strategy) – currently works well, adding:
“The idea is not to destroy it now. It’s shown its validity, and it doesn’t need to be destroyed now.”