Benchmarking National - PRO INNO Europe

5 Towards Good Practices –
The real world of IPR
support services
5.1 What’s out there for SMEs:
Evidence-based policy
The last two chapters have built the framework of issues to be considered for
setting up an adequate support structure for SMEs in the field of IPR. This framework
describes the challenges for the design of support structures and ways that policy
can deal with them. The following section provides a practical assessment of how
policy addresses the subject of IPR in connection with SMEs.
The analysis focuses less on IPR policy at a strategic level, and more on the actual
support services given as it is perceivable by SMEs. Furthermore, the IPR
system is taken as it is – the analysis does not, for example, cover a discussion of
the ideal design, such as whether and how a community patent should be
implemented or whether software patents are necessary. The scrutiny is thus
completely evidence-based and focussed on the support service level.
As a first step with respect to the benchmarking of regional and national support
services in the field of intellectual and industrial property, an inventory of support
services (together with some key data) in the field of IPR was created and the
respective data entered into a database. Support services in this context were
considered to be services which “...assist enterprises or entrepreneurs to successfully
develop their business activity and to respond effectively to the challenges of their
business, social and physical environment” (European Commission, 2001). These
services had to be IPR-related, according to the definition of IPR provided by the
WIPO (WIPO, 2003a; 2004).
In order to be eligible for analysis, IPR services had to fulfil the following criteria:
1. Services had to be publicly funded. Privately offered services were thus only
eligible, if they are at least partly funded by public authorities and if they act
in line with public policy.
2. The services had to target SMEs – either explicitly or implicitly, as evidenced,
for example, by a significant share of SME users.
3. The service had to target as a whole or in analysable parts IPR issues.
4. Concerning the degree of legal formality of the IPR instruments covered, it was
attempted to keep the approach more open and also to include to some
extent services that tackle less formal methods of protecting the intellectual
assets of a company, such as unregistrable IPR (e.g., copyrights) or informal
protection methods (e.g., trade secrets), for example. This step was taken
against the backdrop of the findings presented in the previous chapters.
However, a provision was laid down that preference should be given to
services targeting registrable IPR (especially patents) in the
identification process, and that only in case that no sufficient number of
services could be identified, should other services be included in the delivery.
5. Only services offered at the national or regional level were eligible for
inclusion – services offered by European governmental bodies and/or at the EU
level (e.g., the IPR Helpdesk) were thus excluded, unless they were outstandingly
important in the context of the national IPR service landscape (e.g., in some,
especially smaller, countries the patent libraries).
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TOWARDS GOOD PRACTICES – THE REAL WORLD OF IPR SUPPORT SERVICES