On October 14, 2020, European Union Intellectual Property Office published a report and analyzed the status of European Union enterprises to combine and apply bundles of intellectual property rights, and further resolved the relevant factors that affect the combination and application status of bundles of IPR.
Intellectual property (IP) protection is a key tool to protect the result of research and development (R&D) investments, but also a key mechanism to control and monetize the marketing of the resulting products and services. In a successful IP strategy, bundles of IPRs can help capture the different facets of intellectual assets and incentivize innovation by increasing the return on innovation.
In this study, a large sample of European Union (EU) firms that simultaneously used different types of IP right for the same product in the period 2014-2015 is examined. The reference period is the most recent one for which reliable and unbiased data could be obtained from several databases that have been linked. However, since the patterns of use of IPRs examined in this study are of a structural nature, the use of data from 5-6 years ago does not affect the value of the findings.
This study has examined the bundling of EU-level patents, trademarks and designs by European firms. The concurrent use of IPRs is a relevant topic because such bundling can signal the firm’s exploitation of innovations in the marketplace. Other studies, in particular the EUIPO-EPO (2019) study of high-growth firms, indicate that SMEs that bundle different IPRs have a higher likelihood of achieving high growth in subsequent years.
This study looks at EU firms that simultaneously use different types of IPRs for the same products in the period 2014 2015. The sample is made up of 63 286 firms altogether holding 76 202 European patents, 98 257 EU trademarks (EUTMs) and 21 676 registered Community designs (RCDs). These IPRs represent 48.2% of the total IPRs filed in the EUIPO and the EPO by European Union (EU) firms during the period.
The main conclusions of this report include:
(1) Of the firms in this sample, 8.3% have applied for more than one type of IPR. The IPRs filed by these firms correspond to 35.7% of all IPRs in the sample. Out of these firms, 1 % applied for all three IPRs, (patents, trademarks, and registered designs) during the period. This corresponds to 16.8% of all IPRs registered in the EUIPO and the EPO by firms in the sample. These figures indicate a strong concentration of IPRs.
(2) Out of the total designs and patents registered, half belong to firms from the sample. Furthermore 45% of design filings come from firms also filing trademarks. Trademark filings show a different pattern though. Most trademarks (nearly 80%) are filed by firms that file only trademarks but neither designs nor patents.
(3) Patents are the IPR that is most often used together with other rights. Firms filing both trademarks and patents filed nearly 4 patents for every trademark; firms filing both designs and patents filed 6.5 patents for every design. When it comes to designs and trademarks filed by the same firm, there are 1.5 trademarks per design.
(4) The multi-IPR firms have a strong economic weight, representing 31.9% of employment and 35.5% of turnover in the sample. Firms filing all three types of IPR represent 14.1% of employment and 16% of turnover. The size of firms is of importance. The larger the firm, the more likely is it to be a multi-IPR business. More than 20% of large firms have filed more than one type of IPR, compared to only 7% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). More than 64% of the all IPRs filed by large firms are concurrent, compared to 20 % of IPRs filed by SMEs. The study also shows significant differences among sectors. At one extreme, 15 % of firms in ‘manufacturing and mining’ are multi-IPR firms, while only 6% of firms active in ‘services, commerce and utilities’ use concurrent IPRs. This is not surprising given that those sectors file relatively few patents.
（Source: EUIPO）
