Managing intellectual property rights in innovation: the key to reaching the market

By Maria del Coro Gutierez Pla and Lynn Burtchaell, EUIPO SME Programme, European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), Alicante, Spain

A recently published study , Intellectual property rights and firm performance in the EU, from the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO), confirms the strong, positive relationship between a company’s ownership of different types of IP rights and its economic performance. The analysis, which uses data from over 127,000 companies from all EU member states, shows that this relationship is even more pronounced for SMEs, the basis of Europe’s economy.

SMEs that own IP rights have a 68 percent higher revenue per employee than those that do not own any IP rights.

SMEs that own IP rights have a 68 percent higher revenue per employee than those that do not own any IP rights.

According to the European Commission, SMEs represent 99 percent of all businesses in the EU. When controlling for relevant factors, such as country or industry sector, SMEs that own IP rights have a 68 percent higher revenue per employee than those that do not own any IP rights. Moreover, SMEs that own a combination of patents, trademarks and registered designs generate almost double (98 percent) the revenue per employee compared with companies that do not own any of the three IP rights. A previous study by the EPO and the EUIPO, published in 2019, found that SMEs that make use of IP rights are more likely than other firms to achieve high growth in turnover in subsequent years.

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