Benchmarking National - PRO INNO Europe

why not to patent” (which refers more to value awareness) to be of more
importance than the question of “how to patent” (which covers technicalities
of the patenting process and refers more to effective awareness) (see Graph
19). There is thus a definite need to explain to users the various pros and
cons of patents and other IPR tools, prior to explaining in detail legal
technicalities of application/registration procedures.
� The two most important quality factors (in terms of “high relevance” assigned
to them by users from the case study services) for IPR awareness services are
the “competence of staff” and the “ease of access” (see Graph 19). The
latter refers in particular to adequate marketing and visibility of the service.
Services in the US and particularly Australia (see section 5.6.1) have, to this
end, been able to brand their activities rather successfully, probably more so
than in Europe. The involvement of and networking with other actors in the
innovation landscape (e.g., development/technology agencies, or even single
technology centres at local levels) are, in this context and for promotional
reasons, of particular importance for patent offices creating awareness raising
material or organising respective events. Experience gathered in the course of
the case study analysis suggests that such cooperation patterns have been
aimed for, with varying degrees of success. Overall, as also noted in section
5.3.3, the level of cooperation between development agencies and patent
offices remains in many instances an area for improvement. Interestingly,
“spatial distance” does not play much of a role for awareness raising measures,
not even for roadshows.
� User segmentation is an important topic for awareness raising activities. As
the case study analysis has shown, IPR awareness raising services are likely to
run across SMEs with very differing background knowledge on IPR – some
might be complete IPR beginners who only want general information, others
Graph 19 Key quality factors for services similar to case study services which
have explicit awareness raising as their main goal, percentage of
respondents
Competence of Staff
Ease of access & identification
Timely delivery
Information on different IP strategies ("why/why notto patent")
Technical information ("how to patent")
Administrative efforts
Scope of service
Costs
Individual contact
Referal to & availability of other services in-house
Referal to external services
Spatial distance
Source: User survey, services considered = 5, n = 100
14
26
25
41
48
46
54
51
65
35
73
71
84
53
52
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
39
46
28
34
42
23
high relevance medium relevance
18
24
12
%
77
TOWARDS GOOD PRACTICES – THE REAL WORLD OF IPR SUPPORT SERVICES