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Swansea IPR Centre
by Andrew Beale
Director
Swansea IPR Centre
Previously the Head of the Swansea Law School, Andrew has been seconded to the posts of Director of the new Swansea IPR Centre and Coordinator for the Swansea IPR Initiative.
Introduction
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| Swansea IPR´s Andrew Beale |
This article comes at an opportune time, as we are almost through the first 18 months since the launch of the Swansea IPR Center. Created as part of Commercial Services at the Swansea Institute of Higher Education, located in the Welsh city of Swansea, the main task of the Swansea IPR Centre is to run an industry support project on behalf of our local government. The Intellectual Property -- Support for Innovative SMEs Project (Swansea IPR Initiative) is the first of its kind in the United Kingdom. We work with local Small/Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to help them realize the commercial values of their patents, trademarks, designs and copyrights -- the intangible assets of their business that seldom realize value. Our £442,000 Pilot Initiative runs from October 1999 to December 2001 and is funded in part out of Objective Two of the European Regional Development Fund.
Before we look at the Swansea IPR Initiative in more detail, it is important that we first place our efforts in context.
Wales in the International Scene
Statistics make clear that when it comes to patenting activity, Japan leads the way. In the latest report from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, we see that of the top ten patenting organizations in the United States in 1999, only three were U.S. Corporations, whilst six were Japanese and one was Korean. The lack of any European firms in this list is remarkable. Additionally, not only are European firms not among the top patenting organizations in the US, but they do not rank much better on their own soil. Companies from Japan and the United States together represent half of the European patent applications, and organizations from these two countries account for two thirds of the top ten European patent applicants.
While patenting activity is lagging in Europe, it is even worse in the UK. Out of all European patent applications originating from member states of the European Union, only one out of ten applicants will actually come from the UK. The United Kingdom trails other similarly industrialized nations, as European patent applications are four times more likely to come from Germany; on a per populace basis, we see 70 European patent applications per million inhabitants in the UK, as compared to nearly 170 applications per million inhabitants from Germany.
Statistics make clear that when it comes to patenting activity, Japan leads the way.
If the statistics show that Japan and the United States are ahead of Europe in patenting activity, and that within Europe, Germany leads the UK, how does Swansea -- Wales´s second largest city with a population of 250,000 -- fare in comparison?
It is hard to determine the lack of success in Swansea simply from statistics. From statistical averages, we might expect to see something in the order 36 UK patent applications p.a. (with a granting of 12 UK patent applications p.a.) and 18 European patent applications and 18 Euro-PCT patent applications p.a. originating from Swansea firms. But these are only broad averages, as we don´t have any region-based specifics available. The UK Patent Office (located in Newport, Wales) does not presently have a computer programme which captures statistical information by geographical region, leaving us unable to precisely determine patenting activity in Swansea.
However, the empirical evidence at our disposal suggests a bleak picture for Swansea and the rest of Wales. Estimates show that of UK firms with recognized R&D activity, two-thirds are not using the patent system. Patenting activity is determined in large part by company size; the bigger the firm, the greater the likelihood that the patent system will be used. This leads us to the conclusion that the vast majority of SMEs in the UK, though widely acknowledged to be an important source of innovation, are failing to use the patent system at all. Swansea, like the rest of Wales, has an SME-driven economy. SMEs, those businesses with less than 250 employees, account for 71% of Welsh employment (compared with 57% in the UK) and represent 99.8% of all businesses located in Wales. The importance of SMEs to the Welsh economy leads us to believe that there is very little patenting activity in the region. Given the lack of patent protection, it is clear that our local economic regeneration can be assisted by getting the SMEs that drive Swansea´s economy to start using intellectual property to legally protect and commercially exploit their innovations.
Swansea IPR Initiative
The Swansea IPR Initiative was officially launched from the Swansea IPR Centre on 4th February 2000 by Lord Griffiths, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs, Europe. The Initiative has as its purpose to provide local SMEs with the knowledge and financial means to fully exploit their ideas and inventions. To this end, we offer expert legal advice (via Patent Agents, Trade Mark Attorneys, and Solicitors) to our SMEs. We will also fund 60% of the legal costs associated with their patent, trademark, design, or copyright, up to a maximum of £6,000 per proposal). To help SMEs fully capitalize on their ideas and innovations, we have pursued three specific aims:
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Increased Awareness of Intellectual Property -- The first aim of the Initiative has been to raise awareness of the importance of intellectual property within our SME community. In October 1999, after receiving our initial European grant monies, we immediately sent a mailing to over 2000 SMEs; in November we established our promotional Web site (http://www.iprswansea.com); and in December we organized a Seminar with the UK Patent Office which was attended by 100 local SMEs. We have also generated substantial media coverage for the Initiative, evidence of which can be seen on our Web site. Our target was to raise awareness and interest in the community in order to sign up a minimum of 15 SMEs. By the end of December 1999, we had easily surpassed this target by signing up 125 SMEs to the Swansea IPR Initiative.
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Protection through Intellectual Property -- The second aim of the Initiative is to help our SMEs protect their Intellectual Property. Our target was to generate 36 patent, trademark, or copyright applications under the Swansea IPR Initiative. At the time of writing, we have received 52 applications for assistance, of which we are already committed to supporting 27 (see below for the breakdown).
The success that the Swansea IPR Initiative has achieved in helping to protect the patents and trademarks of local SMEs has attracted a great deal of attention. The Initiative has attracted extra funding from the Welsh Development Agency (WDA) and the West Wales Tec (WWTec), enabling us to double the number of individual Projects we are able to support. We have also achieved the accolade of winning the Welsh Regional Final of the prestigious One2One National Business Awards.
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Commercialization of Intellectual Property -- The third aim of the Initiative, to help local SMEs to commercially exploit their intellectual property, is considered to be our most problematic area for delivery. When it comes to trading in intellectual property, no other type of organization experiences the rebuttal of an unsolicited enquiry more than the SME. No efficient marketplace has existed to allow SMEs to effectively commercialize their intellectual property. Therefore, we were greatly interested when we were introduced the services of a new Internet business-to-business Web site called yet2.com; we felt that this might be the ideal outlet to allow SMEs to commercialize their intellectual property.
We...were stunned to receive an email the following Monday from a North American organization requesting an introduction.
We have created a Swansea IPR Centre Membership with yet2.com. Under the umbrella of this membership, all of our local SMEs have been given their own User Account. This account gives them unrestricted access to the yet2.com Web site and the opportunity to search for technologies to licence, undertake free patent searches via Aurigin and most important of all, list their technologies. yet2.com has also provided assistance by hosting a Seminar for our SMEs on how to advertise their technologies on the yet2.com Web site.
Our initial activity with yet2.com has been quite successful. One of the first technologies loaded for one of our organizations was from the Swansea Institute for Higher Education (SIHE). SIHE has an international reputation for Stained Glass work, and their technology that we posted relates to glass blocks and is expected to have prominent use in a new landmark Welsh building. With assistance from yet2.com, we loaded this technology on the Web site late one Friday afternoon and were stunned to receive an email the following Monday from a North American organization requesting an introduction. Although no deal ultimately resulted, it was clear evidence to us (if evidence were needed) of the reality of the yet2.com vision. Where commercializing intellectual property has been traditionally difficult for Welsh SMEs, the use of yet2.com yielded immediate interest from an organization that never would have been exposed to the technology. yet2.com will expose our organizations to a new realm of possibilities for the licensing of their intellectual property, and we believe it will help our SMEs realize significant value from their assets. As for our technology from SIHE, it has been nominated as a yet2.com Technology of the Week and has continued to attract considerable interest. We remain confident that it is only a question of time before a deal can be struck.
Conclusion
We have enjoyed a high degree of success in the year since Swansea IPR Initiative was founded, and can be justifiably proud of the achievements of our SMEs to date. However, we accept we are only just starting to scratch the surface. We are on the right track, and feel sure that with continued access to financial support and objective advice we can help our SMEs bring great value to our local economy through the creation and exploitation of intellectual property.
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