EPO and EUIPO published a very interesting study called “High-growth firms

and intellectual property rights”.

This study tries to make a connection between the protection of intellectual property assets and the likelihood of a company’s growth.

According to the study:

SMEs that have filed at least one IPR are 21% more likely to experience a subsequent

growth period, and 10% more likely to become an HGF. The likelihood of experiencing a high growth period is 9% higher for SMEs that have filed at least one patent and 13% higher for those that have filed at least one trademark.

The likelihood of experiencing a high growth period is 17% higher for SMEs that have filed at least one European IPR. Filing a European IPR, therefore, provides a positive indicator of an SME’s readiness to scale up business to European level.

In high-tech industries, the likelihood of high growth is 110% higher for SMEs that have filed one or more European patents. Interestingly, the predictive power of European patents is particularly high in low-tech industries (+172%), where a patent filing can be a relatively rare event.

IP bundles involving trade marks systematically outperform other bundles and single IPR categories, thus suggesting that trademarks are the basic building block of effective IP bundles. This is likely due to the fact that a trademark registration is related to market entry and thus turnover growth.

The full text of the study can be found here.