In the modern globalized economy, multinational companies (MNCs) can conduct business in markets across the world quickly and efficiently. However, one byproduct of a globalized economy is that multinationals are often able to shift their profits to subsidiaries across jurisdictions in order to minimize their overall tax burden. A common mechanism for profit shifting, and the focus of this blog post, is transferring the ownership of intellectual property (IP). Transferring patents, trademarks and copyrights across a corporate ownership tree allows MNCs to book profits in the jurisdictions with the lowest applicable taxes.