EUIPO survey: 60% of SMEs find IP protection beneficial

A survey created by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has found that 60% of all intellectual property-owning small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) think that protecting their innovations has been beneficial for their business.

The EUIPO’s survey, called ‘IP SME Scoreboard 2016’, looked at the attitudes of SMEs in the EU towards IP protection, how they use it, access it and benefit from it.

Of those who had registered IP rights, 13% believed it had been “very positive” and 47% found it had a “positive” impact on their business, while 36% declared it had no impact.

The survey asked nearly 9,000 SMEs and found that IP protection had positively affected their business including by increasing their reputation and image of reliability, and strengthening long term business prospects.

Those surveyed were more likely to register domain names and use trade secrets than any other form of IP protection, with trademarks coming in third place.

Preventing copying and gaining legal certainty were singled out as the main reasons for registering IP rights.

Almost one third said that their IP rights had been infringed and used in bilateral negotiations “next to” court procedures to solve IP conflicts. Of those surveyed, 12% said they had taken no action when infringement had occurred.

António Campinos, executive director of EUIPO, said: “SMEs represent 99% of all business in the EU, and are the backbone of Europe’s economy. Therefore, we need information which clearly shows the reality of the IP environment for innovative EU SMEs—why they seek IP protection and what barriers they face.”