SMEs with IP rights outperform those without: EPO report
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that have registered IP rights earn almost 32% higher revenues per employee compared to SMEs that do not, a new report shows.
The report, ‘Market success for inventions—patent commercialisation scoreboard: European SMEs’, published today by the European Patent Office, said that SMEs and individual entrepreneurs were behind one in every five patent applications filed at the EPO in 2018.
But, it said that just 9% of SMEs in Europe own registered IP rights, compared to 40% of large companies.
“These IP-owning SMEs outperform their counterparts that hold no IP rights. They are, for instance, more innovative, more likely to grow over time, and have almost 32% higher revenues per employee than SMEs that have no registered IP rights,” the report said.
It said SMEs that have filed a European patent application are 25% more likely to experience turnover growth of 10% or more for three consecutive years.
Additionally, the report found that resource-constrained SMEs use external partnerships as a way of entering new markets or sharing the financial burden of innovation.
Furthermore, jointly exploiting inventions with external partners enables SMEs to leverage their partners' resources too. SMEs involved in partnerships identify "increasing revenue" (85%) and "market access" (73%) as the main motives for collaborative exploitation.
“However, the report notes that SMEs seeking international partners face serious challenges such as limited availability of IP expertise, resources, and business contacts to support their commercialisation efforts across Europe,” the EPO said.
EPO president António Campinos said SMEs are a “key user group in the European IP system”.
“Crucially, this new study demonstrates that SMEs are also using patents to commercialise their inventions, they are increasingly innovative with their IP strategies, and that there is tremendous untapped potential.
“Given the role that patents play in supporting our economy and bringing forward new technologies, efforts have to continue in finding ways to tackle successfully the challenges revealed in this study,” Campinos said.
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