Benchmarking National - PRO INNO Europe

4 The policy agenda for SMEs –
Issues to be addressed in the
study and beyond
4.1 Lessons learned for policy makers
In section three it was shown that successfully coping with IP and IPR is considered
to be a critical factor for a number of industries, and of increasing importance for
many of the rest. It was also shown that a company, be it an SME or a large
enterprise, has to be fully aware of IP and IPR issues surrounding its business. It
should ideally implement a rather broad IP and IPR strategy, embedded into overall
innovation and business management. Given the many functions the IPR system
offers today, the rationale behind formulating an IPR strategy should be maximising
profits, rather than only protecting IP. This seems to interlock firmly with relatively
new IPR-based business models and might imply a change of mindsets and cultures
regarding the use of IPR by SMEs: It is not the IPR itself that actually counts, but the
strategy and business model behind its usage. For policy makers acting in the
current IPR framework, this has a number of important implications:
� There is no undisputed positive relationship between the number of
times an IP protection method (or an IPR tool) is used and the
innovation performance, or even further, the business performance of
enterprises. As filing patents might prove to be useful as well as harmful to a
company, policy makers should refrain from using patent statistics as a “true”
measure of innovation performance and keep the limitations described in
various studies in mind.
� The critical success factor is the employment of an optimal and
qualified mix of different IP protection tools. Awareness and know-how
regarding the usage of all IP protection methods are thus pre-requisites, and
the availability of such knowledge to all relevant players and stakeholders,
including SMEs, support service providers, and others, should be a goal. This
notion of awareness is somewhat different from awareness of the basic
functions and procedures surrounding patents. It covers not only technical and
legal know-how (i.e., knowledge on “how to patent”) but also business knowhow
(“why to patent”) (see also section 5.4.1).
� Depending on the business model employed, company size is not necessarily
a primary enabling / inhibiting factor for using IPR. Examples can be found of
large enterprises which manage IPR badly, and examples can also be found of
SMEs which cope well with IPR. The existence of both examples supports a
more differentiated view of the barriers analysed as they concern the usage
and non-usage of IPR by SMEs.
� At the same time, the possibility cannot be ignored that the barriers
identified in these studies point to a market failure of the IPR
system regarding SMEs. This would necessitate policy intervention. Of all
the barriers identified, it is especially the costs and the related litigation issues
which are striking. Given the higher costs of patents in Europe (as compared
to the US and Japan), measures to reduce the costs (e.g., by using subsidies or
by changing the IPR framework) seem justifiable. However, in light of the other
aspects described above, it is questionable whether subsidies alone will be able
to improve significantly SMEs’ usage of IPR. Care is needed in the design of a
service offering financial support for the filing of patents.
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THE POLICY AGENDA FOR SMES – ISSUES TO BE ADDRESSED IN THE STUDY AND BEYOND