European Firms and their Attitude Towards Intellectual Property: A Study Undertaken by EIU.
The Economist Intelligence Unit has published a paper authored by Mr. Paul Tyrrell (Editor: Mr. Denis McCauley) under the title: The value of knowledge: European firms and the intellectual property challenge (Link thanks to Mr. Joff Wild in his IAM Blog). The Document is an Economist Intelligence Unit white paper, sponsored by Qualcomm.
They have conducted an online survey of senior executives from across Europe in September to October 2006. In all, 405 individuals, including 102 CEOs and 85 other C-level executives, took part. Additionally, also in-depth interviews with several European executives having direct responsibility or knowledge of their firm's management of intellectual property were made, as well as with independent European experts on intellectual property.
"[...] European companies are changing their approach to intellectual property (IP) management. Protection of the company's 'crown jewels' - its patented or copyrighted assets - remains paramount, as infringement threats from the developing world multiply and litigation increases at home. Pressure from shareholders is also building, however, to make use of swollen IP portfolios to improve top-line results. [...]"
In particular, the paper finds:
The strategic importance of IP is growing rapidly.
European IP remains under threat from both developing and developed markets.
Collaboration is crucial to IP value maximisation.
European companies need greater legal harmonisation.
One of the respondents of the survey argued that the global IP system is becoming strained, saying that there are so many questionable rights around. For example, in the US there are millions of patents, and each probably has around 10-20 claims. According to him it is becoming more likely that one of these claims will be relevant to your products, but you cannot stop projects on this basis or you won't have innovation any more. According to him, you must ignore it, try to find a solution or reach a judgement about whether it will survive court.... This is a business of risk-taking, he concludes. Indeed, and this is my comment, there are many facings of the present IP system that deserve to be improved by making patent data more transparent.
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Dipl.-Phys. Axel H Horns is Patentanwalt (German Patent Attorney),
European Patent Attorney as well as European Trade Mark Attorney. In particular, he is Member of:
Economist Intelligence Unit has published a 
