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Intermediation of Intellectual Property Awareness by Dr Robert Pitkethly of the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre, St Peter’s College, Oxford University, has been published as ACCA research report no. 107.
Executive Summary
The issue
An earlier survey for the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) revealed that micro-firms not only form a significant proportion of UK firms but also have the lowest levels of intellectual property (IP) awareness. This has serious implications for the competitiveness of start-up and micro-companies. Consequently, how SMEs and particularly micro-firms become IP aware is a critical issue in the competitiveness of UK industry.
This report describes the sources from which, and the routes by which, firms, and especially micro- and small firms, acquire IP awareness. It focuses in particular on the role of non-IP-specialist professional advisers such as accountants and other sources of IP advice.
Methodology
The research was qualitative and involved semi-structured interviews, primarily with manufacturing-based micro-firms and SMEs from a range of industry sectors and with sources of expert IP advice as well as professional intermediaries. Sufficient interviews were carried out to enable a reasonably representative picture of the range of IP awareness mediating activity that exists, for micro-firms and SMEs.
The report
This research report reveals how micro-firms and SMEs gain (or do not gain) IP awareness and thus suggests what steps might be taken to help make UK industry more informed about IP. The research also reveals the role that non-specialist advisers, such as accountants and non-IP solicitors, play in mediating and thus increasing IP awareness among micro-firms and SMEs.
Conclusions
The study illuminates an area of the recent UK IP awareness survey which the quantitative data did not explain so clearly; secondly, it provides ideas for potential ways to improve both SME IP awareness and access to expert IP advice, and finally it provides the groundwork for further hypothesis development concerning SMEs’ use of intellectual property rights (IPRs).
SMEs can and do make direct connections with sources of expert IP advice. Nonetheless, the reluctance of many SMEs to consider IP efficiently is in large part due not just to lack of effective IP awareness but also to lack of awareness of the value of IP combined with the high initial costs of some forms of IP protection.
Indirect links
In addition to informal indirect links there are a number of intermediaries that play or might play significant roles in raising SMEs’ IP awareness.
Solicitors have close links with accountants yet also have good links with patent attorneys, whose work they understand and largely complement. Solicitors thus have a bridging role in the intermediation of IP awareness.
Accountants have relatively close links with solicitors within larger firms but very few direct links with patent attorneys. SME clients of accountants may therefore fail to be put in touch with expert IP advice. In part this may be because of the low level of IP awareness and involvement with IP in most accounting practices. Increasing IP awareness among accountants should help raise SMEs’ IP awareness.
Where venture capitalists are involved with SMEs, they may play a crucial role in enforcing higher standards of IP management as part of their efforts to protect their investment.
In the future, the advent of more mixed professional partnerships may give rise to better referral of firms for IP advice.
An IP divide
Professional advisers to SMEs, and indeed the SMEs they advise, can be divided into high-IP-dependent and low-IP-dependent firms or individuals. The implication of this IP divide is that the high-IP-dependent businesses are largely IP aware and it is only the low-IP-dependent or perceived non-IP-dependent firms where there is concern about IP awareness. The interviews suggest that lack of awareness of IP value may play as significant a role in this as lack of effective awareness of IP itself.
Barriers to IP awareness
Barriers to IP awareness lie largely with individuals. Non-IP-specialist solicitors may fail to place sufficient emphasis on IP. Accountants who are also uninformed about IP may give inadequate consideration to IP issues. The current abundance of work for patent attorneys may also form a barrier to the spread of IP awareness in that it reduces the incentive for patent attorneys to market services to local SMEs.
Potential solutions
Intermediaries and IP experts need to develop greater IP awareness among SMEs and provide easier access to IP advice for them. In doing so the interests, both financial and otherwise, of SMEs, intermediaries and IP experts need to be taken into consideration.
The need to convince SMEs of IP’s value is as great as the need to reduce IP costs. Intermediaries also need to have their IP awareness raised and to be convinced that this is in their clients’ best interests and therefore theirs as well; IP experts also need persuading that paying attention to SMEs is in their long-term interests as much as those of the SMEs.
Increasing the IP awareness of accountants might be achieved by the addition of IP issues to checklists used to ensure critical issues are not missed when advising clients but this will be unlikely to be really effective unless accompanied by related training leading to understanding of what is being checked.
Ultimately, the problems with IP awareness lie not with the IP aware but with the IP unaware and the unexploited IP resources they may have, and therefore improving overall levels of IP awareness is a critical issue for the competitiveness of UK industry.
The full report is available to download from the ACCA website here.
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