Trade in IP products (IPP) has grown rapidly over the past decades and at an accelerating pace in recent years. Advances in information and communications technologies (ICTs), and the possibilities offered by digitization and new business models, have widened opportunities for such trade, shaping production networks in goods and services and global value chains. This paper describes the importance of such trade. It depicts current concepts and methods used to compile official statistics in a global value chain environment and to describe characteristics of traders in IP products. In considering what we ca learn from cross-border knowledge flows from IMF Balance of payments data and other statistical frameworks, it concludes with an outline for a way forward to improve the information base.