Benchmarking National - PRO INNO Europe

8. Case Study: serv.ip
Country: Austria
Original title: serv.ip
Target group: All companies
Coverage: National
X (Pro-active) awareness raising measures/Public Relations
X Information Provision Services
Category*: X Training
Customized in-depth consulting and advisory services/
points
Finance & Legal Framework
*classification system defined by the Austrian Institute for SME Research
8.1 Serv.ip in a nutshell
The Austrian service serv.ip was chosen as a case study in the scope of the
underlying benchmarking exercise especially because of its organisational set-up:
Having its roots in the Austrian patent office, the service is actually an outsourced
subsidiary (a “partial legal entity”) of the patent office, operating on a non-profit
– but self-sufficient cost-covering – basis, and is structured like a private company.
By taking this step, serv.ip can operate in much more customer-oriented manner
(it has, for example, to pay less attention to bureaucratic procedures).
Service activities themselves focus on the provision of tailor-made patent database
search services and pro-active awareness raising activities (roadshows, seminars/
trainings). The objectives of serv.ip are in particular:
� to offer information on IPR and respective support to companies, especially
SMEs, which are interested in IPR issues,
� to provide technical information regarding IPR (patent, trademark and utility
model searches),
� to organise workshops and (pro-active) awareness raising campaigns,
especially the roadshow "gedanken.gut.geschützt" (ideas.well.protected) in
cooperation with the Austrian PO,
� to make patent information, publications, information folders and other
resources available on the internet,
� to offer additional services, i.e. monitoring of patents and/or trademarks,
referring to other parties (i.e. the Austrian PO), copying and translation
services.
The purpose of the roadshow “ideas.well.protected” is primarily to provide general
information about IPRs and to give an overview of the services offered by serv.ip,
the Austrian patent office and other important stakeholders or service providers in
the field of IPR.
Within the scope of serv.ip, special workshops on relevant IPR subjects can also be
booked. Some of the offered workshops include information about the "legal
protection of computer-implemented inventions", "protection of trademarks"
(national, the community trademark, international), "international protection of
inventions" and "patent searches". Fees are required for all of these services.
Serv.ip focuses on SMEs but is open to enterprises of any size. According to the
service providers, the needs of SMEs and those of large enterprises differ
considerably. As SMEs are often overloaded with daily work crucial to their business
and do not have the necessary resources and/or extra time for searching in patent
databases, for example, considerable demand exists with regard to services where
serv.ip acts like an agent on behalf of the SMEs. The product “Expressrecherchen”
185
ANNEX I – CASE STUDIES