A European defence-technology company can own an invention outright and still be unable to do the three things that turn it into money. It may not be free to send the application to the patent office it has chosen; it may not be free to show the underlying technical file to the investor conducting due diligence or to the industrial partner that would manufacture the result; and it may not be free to grant the licence on which the whole commercial case rests. These are not consequences of weak title. They are separate permissions, granted by different authorities, on different legal tests, at different moments, and in France, Germany and Italy they are not the same permissions. The company’s lawyers will confirm that it owns the invention. That answer is correct and, for the decision actually in front of the board, largely beside the point. What matters for a cross-border research consortium, for the fund weighing a growth round, and for the ministry counting on the resulting capability is narrower and harder: at the moment the company wants to act, is it permitted to act, and if not, what has to happen first. That is the question this comparison is built to answer, and the answer determines how much of Europe’s defence innovation can actually be financed, licensed and industrialised across borders rather than merely invented.