A recent study regarding the connection between the Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and intellectual property rights registration has been released by the European Union IP Office.
In the attempt to understand the reasons for which priority is not always given to intellectual property by SMEs, we have analyzed the study in order to find a way to encourage the innovators to enjoy the full benefits of their creative products and services.
As a general view, the majority of the SMEs consider themselves to be innovative and the most important protection for this type of enterprises are domain name registration, followed by trade marks.
SMEs consider that the process of innovation can be defined by four stages: conducting research and development, inventing new products, processes or services, creating internal tools or processes to build or implement final products or services and undertaking the risks and costs of making, selling and marketing a commercial product. According to this business model, SMEs have registered intellectual property rights at the second and the fourth step.
The main reasons for which SMEs registered an intellectual property right are the following: prevent copying (79%), better legal certainty (74%), increase of the value and image (73%), more effective enforcement (50%), improvement of the negotiation position (45%), obtaining license revenues (23%), improvement of the changes of financing (22%).
Also, the study shows that a big majority of companies that proceeded with IPR registration report positive effects like: increased reputation or image of reliability (78%), strengthening of long-term business prospects (58%), increased turnover (57%), expanded markets (47%), new opportunities of collaboration with other companies (46%), boost of profitability (33%) increased employment (21%), easier access to financing (16%).
Intellectual property is definitely a great asset for any business. However, there is still a small percent of SMEs that have registered their intellectual property right compared to the large enterprises that benefit from the intellectual property protection.
The survey shows the set of circumstances that have a negative impact on the decision to register intellectual property rights.
The respondents across all over the European Union brought into attention the obstacles that influence them when considering intellectual property protection: 35 % stated that they do not take any measures to protect their innovations because they do not see any benefit of doing so. A further 13 % do not have enough knowledge on how to protect innovations, while 10 % say the procedures are too costly. Other answers range from the feeling that procedures are too long and burdensome (8 %) or that they want to avoid litigation (5 %).
Some factors can make SMEs register IPRs as they would be assured of receiving adequate protection, if it would be easier to take legal action and if the process would be easier to understand and access.
When asked under what conditions companies would consider registering an intellectual property right, the main factors mentioned are: if I could be sure of adequate protection (30 %), if it would be easier to take legal action against infringers and get appropriate compensation and other remedies (30 %), if the process could be easier to understand (28 %), if the registration would be easier to access (26 %), and if it would be cheaper to register or renew an IPR (22 %).
These results indicate that a combination of changes would be needed to encourage SMEs to register IPRs by the IP Offices.
In this context, IP law firms can also have a strong impact by sharing their knowledge through all the channels and presenting the procedure in a way that SMEs would perceive it as being accessible.