A new study published today by the European Patent Office (EPO) finds that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) rely on European patents to protect their high-potential inventions and that two thirds of these inventions are commercially exploited.
The study, entitled “Market success for inventions – Patent commercialisation scoreboard: European SMEs”, finds that SMEs depend heavily on partnerships with domestic or foreign partners. The report shows that half of all commercialised inventions protected either by a European patent application or a granted European patent are exploited in collaboration with an external partner via a licencing agreement (62% of the respondents), co-operation (49%) or spin-off (32%). Moreover, the partner is usually from another European country. This reveals how resource-constrained SMEs use partnerships as a way of entering new markets or sharing the financial burden of innovation.
