Benchmarking National - PRO INNO Europe

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106 BENCHMARKING NATIONAL AND REGIONAL SUPPORT SERVICES FOR SMES IN THE FIELD OF INTELLECTUAL AND INDUSTRIAL <strong>PRO</strong>PERTY easily, again for the reason of pooling of expert know-how and access. Because of the complexity of the subject, one ought to be nonetheless aware of the fact that an IPR service covering all IP protection or rather IP management issues is hardly a feasible option. Hence, referral and networking activities seem to be important. 4. IPR management over IPR protection. The complexity of the subject of IPR as a strategic issue deserves increased attention. Particularly, the business/ intellectual property management aspect is one factor where many larger enterprises seem to be far ahead of the average IPR-affine SME. With IPR being increasingly used to create revenue, while at the same time many patents which are of no economic value are granted, and with many technological developments looking for applications which provide income, it seems that not the patent so much for itself, but the surrounding business model is the significant success factor. Accordingly, this points to the fact that the business perspective should be given more place in IPR service provision. 5. The crucial role of qualified staff. A big bottleneck can be seen in the number of qualified people available for providing IPR support. Such people should have technical, legal and business expertise, and it is especially the latter aspect that needs the highest level of attention. As a precondition to fostering IPR usage, it seems necessary to foster educational initiatives at universities (business faculties and technical faculties, a “train the trainer” issue), but also – in terms of general awareness – at high school level (“educate the public” issue). This may be also one of the reasons why trainings for SMEs are rather scarce. In designing appropriate syllabi, however, care must be taken that the quality of the educational offerings is up to the challenges – before any such courses, degrees, etc. are fostered or introduced, existing offers should be checked with respect to their quality (e.g., by involving experts form the IP departments of large enterprises in evaluating), as the scarcity of such offers may also imply a high variability regarding their true value in real business life. Institutional level 6. Institutions matter: mind-sets, traditions, institutional architecture. For implementing new or improved IPR services, it is not unimportant to consider who is offering such services. Different mindsets and traditions and thus different institutional architectures make IPR services work in different ways. 7. The key question in this context is: What should national patent offices do? Following their tradition, it is questionable if national patent offices have a neutral stance towards all form of IP protection and appropriation methods (including informal instruments), considering their (implicit) preference for formal approaches, and, a preference for protection rather than management. In this regard, it is desirable to have technology/ innovation development agencies act as entry points for clients (also because of visibility issues), regardless of whether the patent offices are developed further into fully-fledged IP offices or reduced to their core competence of registration offices. 8. Bringing the world of patent offices and innovation agencies together. IPR support services are mainly the domain of patent offices, which operate more or less on their own, separate from technology/innovation agencies which address innovation and R&D-related issues. There is a need to bring both worlds together, following the rationale that IPR management should be part of overall innovation management. The separation can be seen as an indication of system failure. The separation has much to do with the status of a monopolistic authority with a long tradition and a clear understanding of the in- and the outside. However, due to the growing diffusion of
concepts of ‘new public management’, most patent offices have adopted some of these principles and have, as a consequence, been turning themselves into client-centred service organisations. 9. The governance of IPR services providing institutions. As patent offices are a rather new type of player in SME service provision (and because of being more or less isolated from general innovation support), the governance of the services is a critical issue. This particularly emphasises the importance of (i) careful needs analysis and service design, (ii) a systematic co-ordination and co-operation between relevant institutions, particularly between the patent offices and the technology/innovation agencies at the level of service provision, (iii) an overarching policy, and, eventually, (iv) the establishment of incentives for collaboration at all relevant levels25 . 10. The interaction of private vs. public service provision should be addressed. It seems clear that public offerings should not displace private ones, but rather enhance or ignite a market for them. In this context, well designed reward schemes (including a later privatisation of initially publicly funded services) could attract the right people to do a good job. Along the same line, it seems that cooperation with patent attorneys is a key success factor for IPR services. 11. Attracting qualified staff. The huge importance of expert staff and the evident lack of educational offerings in this respect, especially in terms of the business dimension, have proven to be the most critical factors in the acceptance and performance of IPR services. In this regard it is crucial to understand that there is a strong relationship between the significance of the service (coverage, budget, staff, access to other resources, hierarchical position, expectations, thus planning horizons, etc.) and the ability to attract competent staff. Policy level 12. Division of labour between patent offices and innovation agencies. A specific question arises particularly with respect to the division of labour and the attribution of roles between the national patent offices and the technology/ development agencies. Again, the particular decision will depend on the design of the national innovation system and the historical context. Still, some general arguments can be put forward both for and against the two types of organisations. Patent offices are traditionally concerned with the issue of protection of IP, thus they focus solely on registrable IPR. Patent offices possess considerable technical know-how (i.e., with respect to patenting procedures) and know-how in legal matters, and they are perceived by customers to be rather independent and objective. On the other hand, they are relatively new in the world of support offering institutions for SMEs. Technology/development agencies, by contrast, have a significant track record with regard to innovation and R&D support offered to SMEs, have a wider knowledge of the business context and are also better known by SMEs. Their IPR know-how, is, however, limited. There are some quite convincing cases of a well-balanced co-operation between these two (archetypical) institutions. 13. Patent offices and innovation agencies: Two paths seem plausible. The first one is to scale down the scope of the patent offices on their core competence of patent filings (and possibly database searches) and to enrich the technology/innovation agencies with IPR services. Or to enrich the patent offices with additional business and intellectual asset management know-how, thus creating “institutes of intellectual property” 26 . In either case, three aspects seem to be highly important: (i) linkages between the patent offices 25 Policy co-operation can be a difficult issue as co-operation at the policy level is often missing adequate incentives. This is in turn due to the fact that outcomes of policy co-operation may be difficult to adjudge clearly to the respective involved partners. 26 This approach is favoured by Gowers (see Gowers 2006). 107 CONCLUSIONS AND RECCOMANDATIONS
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PRO INNO Europe paper N° 4 BENCHMA
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PRO INNO Europe The innovation poli
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Contents Executive Summary 9 1 Intr
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4. Case Study: Innovation by patent
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Executive Summary Background 1. The
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under all circumstances), but rathe
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overall policy level, which primari
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the fact that the business perspect
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and evaluation). Hence, there is a
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20 BENCHMARKING NATIONAL AND REGION
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3 SMEs in the IPR world 3.1 SMEs an
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amount of time (mostly up to 20 yea
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In contrast to arrangements for pat
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3.3 Usage Patterns of IP protection
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industries of the ICT sector. These
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In a study conducted by Kingston (K
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Care must be taken that statements
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The first step to ensure that IP ma
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The patent troll as an SME-affine e
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Page 117: ANNEX I - CASE STUDIES The case stu
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Table 10 Overview of public availab
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Nr. B* Country Title of the Service
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European Commission Benchmarking na
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ISBN 978-92-79-06926-0 NB-AX-07-004
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