Benchmarking National - PRO INNO Europe

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108 BENCHMARKING NATIONAL AND REGIONAL SUPPORT SERVICES FOR SMES IN THE FIELD OF INTELLECTUAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY and the development agencies should be strengthened in either case, and (ii) high permeability for the exchange of staff between the two organisations should be a goal. (iii) Because their services are better known by SMEs, and, more importantly, because they may likely have a more neutral stance towards the usage of different IP protection instruments (given the patent tradition of the patent offices), it would be probably advisable that technology agencies act as entry points for customers, not the patent offices. 14. Endowment as an indication of priority setting. Many of the services are small in volume and in some cases also restrictive in terms of duration (particularly in those cases, where they are funded and thus connected to European funding, mainly from the European Structural Funds). To the extent that allocation of resources can be considered an indication of priorities, proper endowment with resources (scope, budget, staff, hierarchical position, duration) is critical and pre-determines to a high degree the performance of the services, particularly through the attraction of qualified staff. In those cases, where, for example, the ESF is funding a three-year period, the national institutions should have an agreed policy on funding and operating the service after the period of European funding. 15. National vs. regional approach. There is actually no significant evidence for fostering a strong regional approach. On the contrary, there are several arguments for a genuinely national coverage: (i) high visibility of the service can be more easily achieved if the service is known throughout the country rather than only in a specific region, (ii) scarce expert know-how can be pooled at a central unit and does not need to be provided in every region. Notwithstanding this, there is particularly one case, where a regional dimension can be advantageous, this is, where regional outlets co-operate with national institutions in the promotion and delivery of the service, mainly through referral to other institutions and service providers. 16. Out-reach / spatial distance. Out-reach to local SMEs is important, not the least for marketing reasons. The case study user survey has shown that, in general, spatial distance is not considered to be a critical success factor for IPR support services. Regional outlets can be established with the task to promote the service and refer potential customers to the central unit. This does not, however, mean that regional IPR services are of no use. If they complement the national offerings, if they have clearly defined and limited goals in the context of the region and are designed accordingly, and if they are networked enough with other services, they can provide added value. 17. Growing policy culture. While most industrialised countries have developed a comparatively high level of policy culture in the core fields of technology and innovation policy, the field of IPR related services is still somewhat suffering from a rather poor policy culture, covering the whole policy cycle (need assessment, justification, and design; goal orientation in the performance phase, quality assurance and learning through monitoring and evaluation). However, there is evidence on a growing awareness of the adoption of elements of good practice from the core areas of innovation policy. 18. The cost issue: The study set out to investigate what exists and what can be done in terms of IPR support for SMEs within the current IPR framework. While the results have shown that a lot of things can be moved already in the present-day context, changes of the IPR framework itself should nonetheless be tackled. This applies especially to the cost dimension: Subsidy services cannot in general compensate for the lack of a community patent (or the implementation of the European Patent Litigation Agreement and the European Patent Judiciary). They seem to have in many instances more of a hidden awareness raising function than broad cost-covering goals. Especially for the latter, this type of service is nonetheless important. General tax exemptions or fee reductions are most likely not a viable alternative, either –
mainly because if exemptions are financed by taking funds out of other operational processes of the patent offices (especially examination work which is now financed by the application and renewal fees), one will run the danger that the quality of the examination work will deteriorate while at the same time the number of low-quality patent applications (given the lower barriers for entry) will most likely rise. 19. Towards an IP culture: Finally, the lack of availability of qualified staff (together with the lack of educational initiatives) should be also mentioned on the policy level, as it sets constraints for the magnitude of efforts possible to boost qualified IPR usage and IP management skills of SMEs in the short run. Many recommendations are to a large extent based on these constraints (e.g., the national approach with a central unit providing the pooled expertise). Given the importance of a firm’s IP in today’s economy, policy should address the know-how of SMEs, trainers and also the general public on IP management/ protection/usage matters. In this way, in the long run, availability of expert staff will be less of a problem and desirable snowball effects, as seen in Japan, will be created. This aim should be seen independently of the current or future IPR framework, and it should also not mean that some predisposition is displayed towards patents or against any form of “open source” movement. It points to the need that all actors involved should know about the possibilities to put IP to its best use. 109 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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Benchmarking National - PRO INNO Europe

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