By Lawrence Paleschi, Senior Associate at Carpmaels & Ransford
The UK is rapidly accelerating its offshore wind capabilities, highlighted by the historic 8.4GW Allocation Round 7 (reported here), and the 2026 Hamburg Declaration, which commits the UK and its EU partners to delivering 100GW of offshore wind capacity in the North Sea by 2050. With ambitious projects like RWE’s 1.38GW Vanguard West and hybrid energy storage systems gaining momentum, innovation is scaling at unprecedented speeds. However, as the engineering moves further offshore into deeper waters to harness stronger winds, innovators face a unique and often misunderstood challenge: how do you protect Intellectual Property (IP) when your technology sits outside traditional territorial borders?
The territorial problem
Intellectual property rights are inherently territorial. A UK patent protects your invention across the UK landmass, the Isle of Man, and the UK’s territorial waters – defined as reaching up to 12 nautical miles from the coast.
But here lies the industry’s glaring blind spot: modern offshore wind farms are increasingly built far beyond this 12-mile limit. For instance, the monumental Dogger Bank wind farm sits over 50 nautical miles off the UK coast, though within the 200 nautical mile boundary of the UK’s exclusive economic zone.
This jurisdictional grey area was closely scrutinised in the 2022 High Court case between Siemens Gamesa and General Electric. Siemens alleged that GE’s Haliade-X turbines, assembled at Dogger Bank, infringed its UK patent. While the patent was ultimately deemed invalid, the judge made a crucial ruling on territoriality: even if the patent were valid, the offshore assembly at Dogger Bank would not have infringed it, as the assembly was outside the territorial scope of the UK Patents Act 1977. The court firmly rejected the argument that anchoring a turbine to the seabed qualified as “exploiting natural resources” under the Petroleum Act 1998 – a clause that usually extends the geographic reach of UK patents for the oil and gas sector.
Strategic patent drafting
For renewable energy developers, this sets a stark precedent. If your patent claims protect only a fully assembled wind turbine (as in the Siemens Gamesa case) or a complete offshore energy storage system, and that assembly exclusively occurs more than 12 miles out to sea, your UK patent may be effectively unenforceable.
The solution lies in strategic patent drafting. Rather than claiming the entire offshore installation, patent claims must focus on the individual, modular components. If the core innovation is a turbine blade, a specialised gearbox, or a subsea battery casing, the independent patent claims should be directed precisely at those individual parts.
By protecting the component itself, or a ;kit of parts’ intended for offshore assembly, you create enforceable IP. Even if the final assembly happens in international waters, the individual components will likely be manufactured in, or imported through, the UK. This triggers direct infringement under the UK Patents Act 1977 the moment those parts enter a UK port or manufacturing facility.
Energy storage solutions, such as offshore green hydrogen production and subsea battery systems, present similar IP challenges. As developers explore co-locating electrolysers with offshore turbines, protecting the method of energy conversion can also be critical. In particular, if the innovation relates to a process, framing patent claims around the importation of the direct product of that process – such as green hydrogen piped or shipped back to shore – could offer a highly valuable enforcement route, even where the process occurs beyond territorial waters.
Alternatively, trade secrets may seem appealing. The remote nature of offshore installations provides some natural obscurity, but supply chain exposure remains a real risk and trade secrets are unlikely to be enforceable in any formal respect.
Looking Ahead: Safeguarding Your Innovations
As the North Sea transforms into Europe’s clean energy reservoir, backed by the Hamburg Declaration, the stakes for protecting IP have never been higher. As projects scale and competition intensifies, differentiation will depend not only on engineering performance but on the ability to secure and defend technological advantage.
For innovators in offshore wind and energy storage, patents remain powerful tools – but only if approached with a clear understanding of territorial limits and enforcement realities.
In a sector operating increasingly beyond the horizon, IP strategy must be as carefully engineered as the turbines themselves.
