Of the 106 countries that report both sides of the ledger, only 17 earned more from intellectual property (IP) than they paid in 2025. The United States alone collected US$195 billion, about 31% of reported receipts, and its net surplus of US$134 billion is more than five times that of the next country. At the other end, Ireland paid US$210 billion, more than a quarter of all reported payments, while receiving only US$18 billion.

The short version

• The five biggest recipients (the United States, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany) took 67% of all reported IP receipts in 2025. In 2005 the top five took 78%.
• The United States share fell from 40% to 31% over the period, while reported receipts across the countries that report grew almost four times, from US$162 billion to US$629 billion.
• Ireland is by far the largest net payer, at US$192 billion more paid than received. China follows at US$34 billion, then India at US$17 billion and Luxembourg at US$16 billion.
• Payments exceed receipts in the data by about US$120 billion. Cross-border IP flows are measured less consistently than trade in goods, and this gap is one sign of it.

The first chart shows the eight largest net receivers and the eight largest net payers in 2025.

What counts as an IP charge

The indicator covers payments for the use of patents, trademarks, copyrights, industrial processes and designs, franchises, and licences to reproduce or distribute software, books, films and music. It is a balance of payments measure, so it records money that crosses a border in return for the right to use an idea, not the value of the ideas themselves. A country can therefore appear as a big payer because firms located there pay a related company abroad, as well as because it imports a great deal of technology.

The largest recipients and payers, 2025

Shares are of the 106 countries with both receipts and payments reported for 2025 (total receipts US$629 billion). The Netherlands and Switzerland receive a lot and also pay a lot, which is typical of countries where multinational groups hold and license IP.

The concentration is easing, slowly

The second chart follows the share of reported receipts held by the five largest recipients and by the United States, using whichever countries reported in each year.

Most of the fall in the United States share happened between 2013 and 2018, and it has been close to 30% since. The top five have also been losing share, though more slowly.

Why Ireland and the United States stand out

The two outliers are linked. Many of the world's largest IP owners are US companies, and many of them run their non-US business through Irish subsidiaries. The Irish Central Statistics Office says most IP held in Ireland is an asset of foreign-owned corporations, much of it bought from another arm of the same group, and that when the Irish arm uses IP held abroad it must pay a royalty, which counts as an import. So the money Ireland pays is mostly one part of a multinational paying another.

• Tax rules moved the payments. Until about 2020, the "Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich" structure routed royalties from Ireland through the Netherlands to Bermuda. Ireland's 2015 budget changes phased it out, and the US Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 added further limits. According to the St. Louis Fed, Irish and Dutch royalty payments to Bermuda fell to almost nothing by 2021, while Ireland's royalty payments to the United States, on balanced OECD data, rose from about US$21 billion in 2016 to US$55 billion in 2021.
• The two countries do not report the same flows. For 2021, Ireland reported paying the United States US$106 billion in IP royalties, while the United States reported receiving only US$24 billion from Ireland. The gap did not appear for other services or for other country pairs, and the St. Louis Fed calls it a puzzle, with possible explanations including under-reporting in the US or new tax strategies. Depending on which side is right, Ireland's deficit may be overstated or the US surplus understated.
• The United States is the natural recipient. It is home to the world's largest software, pharmaceutical and entertainment groups, which license their IP to affiliates and customers abroad. We could not find an up-to-date official split between payments from related and unrelated parties, so we do not give one.
• The Netherlands, Switzerland and Singapore have large receipts and large payments side by side, which is consistent with IP being held and licensed within groups there. We have not examined them in detail.

The same concentration of IP ownership shows up elsewhere in technology. Our article on the growth of AI training compute looks at who builds the largest models, and our piece on US stock returns compares US shares with the rest of the world.

What this does and does not show

• Location is not use. The data records where payments are booked, not where an invention was made or used, so a net balance is not a clean measure of technological strength.
• Payments exceed receipts. Among the 106 countries with both series in 2025, payments total US$753 billion and receipts US$629 billion. In a perfectly measured world the two would match. The gap comes from countries that do not report one of the series, different timing and classification, and flows that are hard to observe.
• 2025 is still incomplete. 106 countries report receipts and 123 report payments for 2025, and 106 report both. For 2024 the numbers were 126 and 146. Several countries that reported 2024, including Hong Kong, have not yet reported 2025, so the 2025 totals and shares are not fully comparable with earlier years, and the shares in the second chart are of whoever reported that year. The set also grows over time, from 96 reporting receipts in 2005.
• Not all IP income is here. The measure covers licensing and royalties, not the profit a company makes by selling a product made with its own IP, and not research spending or patent counts.
• Nominal dollars. Figures are in current US dollars, so part of the growth since 2005 is inflation and exchange rate movement.
• Revisions. Recent years are revised as national agencies update their balance of payments. Expect 2025 figures to move.

Method and data

• Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators (from IMF balance of payments data), accessed October 2026, under the CC BY 4.0 licence (terms of use).
• Indicators: BX.GSR.ROYL.CD (IP charges, receipts, current US$) and BM.GSR.ROYL.CD (payments), downloaded for all countries through the World Bank API.
• Filters: individual economies only (regional and income aggregates dropped). Net balance is receipts minus payments, for countries with both reported in the same year. Shares divide a country's receipts by the receipts of all countries reporting that year.
• Context: Ireland's Central Statistics Office on intellectual property, the St. Louis Fed on Irish and US royalty reporting (OECD balanced trade in services data), and the IMF Balance of Payments Manual.
• Our work: charts, shares and net balances are our own derived work and are not endorsed by the World Bank or the IMF.