Benchmarking National - PRO INNO Europe

50
BENCHMARKING NATIONAL AND REGIONAL SUPPORT SERVICES FOR SMES IN THE FIELD OF INTELLECTUAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY
By applying the inclusion criteria stated above, the research team was able to
identify 279 support services in the field of IPR for SMEs, 224 of which were
operated in Europe. 10 A further 55 services were identified overseas. Despite the
thorough analysis and rigorous quality assurance mechanisms in place (i.e., the
compiled list was cross-checked with IPR experts and validated by the Group of
Senior Officials for Innovation from the European Commission), completeness of
the list can not be guaranteed11 . Table 4 provides a breakdown of the number of
identified services by country.
One important observation concerning the identified services is that the number
of services varies greatly with countries. The high variation is due to the fact
Table 4 Number of identified support services for SMEs in the field of IPR,
by country
country number of services
Australia 31
Austria 14
Belgium 3
Bulgaria 4
Canada 11
Cyprus 1
Czech Republic 10
Denmark 5
Estonia 5
Finland 10
France 6
Germany 17
Greece 5
Hungary 20
Ireland 4
Italy 8
Japan 8
Latvia 1
Liechtenstein 2
Lithuania 10
Luxembourg 4
Malta 1
Norway 3
Poland 23
Portugal 2
Romania 13
Slovakia 11
Slovenia 3
Spain 12
Sweden 7
The Netherlands 4
Turkey 3
United Kingdom 12
USA 6
TOTAL
Source: Austrian Institute for SME Research
279
10 The number of services may deviate slightly from the number of services in the published electronic database, as the
database was at the end of the study updated to e.g. include some new IPR services which were not operational at
the time of the analysis.
11 An important precondition for a service to be considered in the study arose from the willingness of the service
provider to cooperate with the study team. Further on, it became evident during the progress of the research, that
many countries were in the process of designing new services (especially services that tackle the issue of protecting
intellectual property and dealing with counterfeiting in China), which had at the time of investigation not been
operational. These services are thus mostly not part of the underlying investigation, due to the lack of a track record
for the consecutive analysis.