“Let’s make the IPR system more effective, more accessible, and more affordable for SMEs.”
That was the resounding message by both SME participants and European Commission officials at a conference on Industrial Property Rights (IPRs) held by the European Commission’s DG Internal Market and Services, in conjunction with the French Presidency of the European Council, in Strasbourg on October 15 and 16.
The conference focused on three main topics: a jurisdiction for the European and Community Patents, the Community Patent, and counterfeiting.
As the Commission has pointed out numerous times before, a strong industrial property rights (IPR) system is an important force for driving innovation, stimulating R&D investment and facilitating the transfer of knowledge from the laboratory to the marketplace.
At the IPR conference, this message was reiterated by DG Internal Market and Services Director Margot Froehlinger and by the panelists, among them Spanish ACT member Fernando Guerrero.
Fernando is the CEO and Founder of Solid Quality Mentors, a small multinational company with a solid presence in many European countries that provides tech training, mentoring and support.
Like most ACT members, Solid Quality Mentors places a strong emphasis on leading through innovation. In the case of the Madrid-based company, this manifests itself in the constant search for innovative ways to improve how its customers use Information Technology.
Industrial Property Rights are therefore an extremely important topic for Solid Quality Mentors – but as Fernando so pointedly put it, this shouldn’t mean that the company should have to hire more lawyers than engineers.
SMEs also shouldn’t have to spend more on translation than innovation.
A European IPR regime that works for SMEs therefore needs to be based on a better, simpler and cheaper patent litigation system, of which effective Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) / Mediation mechanisms and a Community Patent are essential parts.
The importance of SMEs for the EU economy cannot be overlooked. Again and again, studies have shown that SMEs are the biggest job creators in Europe. And in a recent paper, Cristina Carias and Rui Baptista (from the Technical University of Lisbon and the Max Planck Research Institute in Jena respectively) pointed out that persistence in job creation is greater in smaller than in larger firms, particularly during recessions, or low growth periods.
But European SMEs face increasing competition from innovative Small and Medium-sized companies in China, India, and other emerging economies. This is in addition to the already existing competition from industrialized country firms.
The needs of EU SMEs therefore cannot and should not be ignored if they are to continue to make an important contribution to the European Union’s prosperity in the future.
To borrow again from our friend Fernando: Let’s work together as a European Union, not just as a Union of European countries, to achieve the IPR system that EU SMEs need.