It can. The standard recognizes an advanced level of knowledge of the petitioning organization's processes and procedures as one basis for L-1B, alongside special knowledge of its product or service. What has to be shown is that the level of knowledge is genuinely advanced relative to others and was gained through substantial experience within the organization.
Advanced compared with whom, and gained how
Two questions decide this branch of the standard. The first is comparative: advanced relative to whom — other employees in the same role, the wider industry, or both? The evidence should address the comparison directly rather than assert seniority. The second is about acquisition: knowledge that anyone could obtain by reading published standards or attending a public course is unlikely to satisfy the test, while knowledge built over years of applying an organization's own procedures to its own edge cases is a different thing. Neither exclusivity nor secrecy is required, and the absence of a patent is irrelevant. Because this is a comparative and fact-specific assessment, requests for further evidence are a realistic possibility even in genuine cases, and a licensed adviser should evaluate the specific facts.
A first review should identify the internal knowledge in sentences that a nontechnical reader can test against records. It should say how the knowledge was acquired, how it differs from commonly available skill, and why the U.S. operation needs it. The related-company relationship and the foreign work history are separate gates: the employee normally needs twelve continuous qualifying months abroad in the prior three years, and L-1B is limited to five years overall. Hypothetical example: A maker of archival-scanning equipment wants to transfer the engineer who tunes its image-restoration workflow. Procedure versions and troubleshooting logs can settle whether the knowledge is company-specific rather than simply advanced engineering.