Benchmarking National - PRO INNO Europe

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BENCHMARKING NATIONAL AND REGIONAL SUPPORT SERVICES FOR SMES IN THE FIELD OF INTELLECTUAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY
The campaign “What is the key?”
“What is the key?” (abbreviated WITK in the following) is an IPR awareness
raising campaign organised and run by the UK Intellectual Property Office
(UKIPO) in partnership with national and local authorities. Its objective is to
offer an overview of the law relating to IPRs, to show their importance to
businesses and how they are relevant to companies of any size. The purpose
of the campaign is to make businesses, especially SMEs, more aware of their
intellectual assets and their potential and to offer information and support on
how to protect them. WITK can be seen as an “information day”, set up as a
two-part IPR event: during the first part, a short introduction to intellectual
property rights covering patents, trade marks, designs and copyright is given
to inform the interested audience about recent developments and available
public support services. Depending on where this event is presented, local
service providers are also invited to talk about their support services
concerning legal protection of IP. The second part of such an event presents
case studies which describe and illustrate how (local) entrepreneurs benefited
from using IPR to protect their intellectual assets. Panel discussions and open
question/answer sessions are offered at the end of each event. The programme
is managed in collaboration with the Chartered Institute of Patent Agents
(CIPA) and the Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys (ITMA), thus including also
relevant service providers from the private sector. Events to promote the
programme have been held all over the UK in co-operation with local partners
such as Business Link Offices and regional development agencies, which
underlines the regional character and dimension of WITK.
� Open days: Two forms of open days were mainly observed in the context of
the underlying benchmarking study: (i) Open days, where the IPR serviceproviding
organisation allows free access to its premises and informs visitors
about aspects related to IPR; often, such open days are accompanied by an
exhibition where at different booths information on IPR-related subjects is
displayed. (ii) Open days, where patent attorneys make a short presentation
on (mostly legal) aspects linked to IPR and answer questions from the audience.
The latter type of open days is generally organised by service-providing
organisations which usually do not operate IPR services in-house (see also
section 5.4.3).
� Publications: Brochures and websites: The creation of brochures on different
aspects of IPR and/or presentation of such information on a website (e.g., for
download but also in a more interactive manner) seem to be strong activity
fields, especially for many patent offices. 17 An example is the LIIP (Linking
Innovation and Industrial Property) publication by the Technology Watch
Centre of Henri Tudor in Luxemburg (an outcome of an international
cooperation involving Spanish, Luxemburgish, Irish, Italian and Greek
organisations (mostly patent offices)) which provides 10 pragmatic
recommendations for SMEs “…highlighting the importance of IP to companies´
business strategies” (LIIP, 2003: 4). Another example is a series of three
information booklets published by the Czech Industrial Property Office in
English and Czech language on trade marks, designs and the protection of
technical solutions. With respect to websites, a noteworthy example would be
the IP Toolkit offered via the website of the Canadian Institute for Intellectual
Property (CIPO) which includes extensive awareness-raising materials (e.g.,
brochures and interactive learning guides) with respect to IPR (see also Graph
18).
17 Though the study focuses on national offerings, it should nonetheless be mentioned that WIPO (http://www.wipo.
int/sme/en) and the EPO (http://www.epo.org/focus/innovation-and-economy/sme-case-studies.html) provide
extensive material of this kind, too.