It is often small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that come up with innovations that give significant impetus to a national economy. In this context, German SMEs are among the most innovative in Europe (EU Innovation Scoreboard 2023).
Several studies show that there is still untapped potential for the use of IP in SMEs in Europe, including Germany. Too few SMEs file IP applications — because they are poorly informed, lack knowledge of services and service providers in connection with the protection of their IP rights and hold prejudices that prevent an application, e.g. that IP rights are too costly or applications are too complex. Or there are doubts about the effectiveness of IP rights, since it allegedly takes great effort to enforce them.
IP protection demonstrably delivers many benefits, especially to SMEs, and often enables the commercialisation of high-risk innovations.
If used correctly, patents and trade marks can considerably contribute to achieving commercial success. Studies show a strong connection between the existence of IP rights and commercial success.
- SMEs that own IP rights have 68% higher revenue per employee than similar SMEs that do not (EUIPO study 2021).
- On average, start-ups in their early growth stage are ten times more likely to raise venture capital funding if they hold patents and trade marks (EUIPO study 2023).
In addition, IP rights strengthen the bargaining power against investors or in mutual licensing, enable exclusivity, enhance the reputation and allow for profitable licensing.
Against this background, the DPMA has added a lot of useful information to its Information pages for SMEs and has made these pages user-friendlier.
Another focus of our activities in 2024 was on measures to raise IP awareness in the education system. This way, we aim to inform pupils and students already at an early stage on intellectual property (especially patents, trade marks, designs and copyright) as well as on the commercial potential of intellectual property and to support them in broadening their problem-solving skills through the use of IP databases. For this purpose, we devised and held certain workshops at universities and schools as well as seminars at the media authorities of the German Länder.
Young people are the inventors and/or entrepreneurs of tomorrow. And only if they know what trade marks, patents, designs and the like are, they will be able to effectively protect their intellectual property.
According to the Federal Government’s Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation, Germany also has difficulties with research-based spin-offs from scientific institutions. This is mainly due to the difficulties with the transfer of intellectual property in the form of patent sales or licences from the scientific institution to the company to be established. Likewise, there are still too few financing possibilities for technology- and IP-intensive companies in the growth stage (e.g. through the provision of venture capital). Compared to other European countries, venture capital investments as a percentage of GDP are below average (EU Innovation Scoreboard 2023).
The cooperation with higher education institutions and universities and their transfer offices is becoming increasingly important for us. For example, in cooperation with proF, a transfer office, and Freie Universität Berlin (FU), we provided a large group of bioscience PhD students with detailed insight into intellectual property. Furthermore, we introduced the young scientists to DEPATISnet and informed them about how to use our free database for searching IP rights for inventions and scientific and technical innovations.