Tax competition amongst countries to attract research investments has accelerated enormously in recent years. Patent boxes are one of the main reasons for this development. A patent box is a special tax regime used by an increasing number of countries to create incentives for research and development by subjecting revenue from intellectual property to a significantly lower tax than other revenue. Beside the introduction of new patent boxes, many countries have recently responded to the changing OECD and EU requirements („nexus approach“) by adjusting their patent box regimes. In the following, Stefan Raabgives an overview of established IP boxes and provides an outlook on possible future developments.