Your Precious Ideas - Intellectual Property Survey Results Revealing

14 January 2008
A J Park recently commissioned UMR Research to conduct the A J Park IP Outlook™ survey. The results have revealed some interesting insights into how New Zealand businesses view intellectual property (IP) rights. The survey results are also a timely reminder about the importance of taking IP in your business seriously.

Working with New Zealand businesses daily on IP protection and strategies, A J Park was keen to see if their view of how New Zealand businesses see IP aligned with the views actually held by business.

The research targeted 500 New Zealand businesses in industries considered likely to deal with IP issues.  Those industries were:

  • ICT, IT or telecommunications
  • Fashion and creative
  • Food and beverage manufacturing or distribution
  • Manufacturing
  • Scientific research, biotechnology or the life sciences

One hundred businesses in each industry were surveyed.  Business size ranged from 1-5, 6-19 and 20+ employees.  Included were businesses located in both the North and South Island.

Varying views were expressed about what is IP.  IP is an umbrella term under which distinct and separate rights can be obtained for patents, designs, copyright, trade marks and plant variety rights.  While some businesses mentioned those rights, their answers revealed a lack of understanding among many businesses about the nature of IP rights.  This result goes someway to explaining why a third of the business surveyed felt that they had not adequately protected their IP.

Attitudes to IP were surveyed and provided the following results (percentages shown are the percentages who agreed):

  • IP has become more important to New Zealand businesses
    over the last few years 90%
  • IP gives us an advantage over our competitors 85%
  • For my company, IP is more of an investment than a cost 80%
  • I know a lot about how to protect business IP 64%
  • My company gets as much value from its IP as it could 67%
  • My company’s IP is well protected 61%

We agree that IP is increasingly important for New Zealand business.  Alarmingly, a third of those businesses surveyed said that their IP is not well protected.  This is surprising when we accept that we are an innovative country who often punches above its weight with cutting edge technology and processes.  Why are we not taking the trouble to protect what we create? 

Innovations and creations, once protected by IP rights, can be sold, licenced or franchised to another business.  49% of those surveyed said IP rights had created business opportunities for them.  Yet many New Zealand businesses still have little or inadequate IP protection.  And as a result, they say they are missing business opportunities.

When questioned, many businesses identified many barriers to protecting IP.  Interestingly, cost was not number one. That space went to a belief that IP rights are often ignored by other businesses.  Many businesses (79%) saw IP protection as an investment not a cost.  Yet businesses are not walking the talk!

Other barriers included the time the process takes to obtain IP rights, perceived difficulty in enforcing IP rights in export markets, the pace of change making protection quickly out-of-date, and competitors of other businesses in the same industry already having IP rights.

31% of those surveyed said that not having IP rights led to a lost business opportunity in New Zealand.  The highest reason at 17% was because a competitor business had copied their work.  The irony is that a concern about competitor’s copying your work is another (and probably the best) reason for protecting your IP rights and then enforcing them. 

The most popular incentives expressed for encouraging businesses to protect their IP in the survey were:

  • Reducing the cost of protecting IP (75%)
  • Tax incentives to develop IP (74%)

Government has removed from existing funding schemes the eligibility of protecting IP rights so there is no easily identifiable way that this can be achieved.  Incentives in the form of R & D credits are being introduced by the Government next year.

The results of the survey provided some clear messages.  Businesses need to up skill themselves on what IP rights exist in their business.  They need to find out how they can protect what they have created to avoid lost business opportunities and stay relevant and competitive in their industry.

Download a full copy of the A J Park IP Outlook™ survey results.

An edited version of this article was published in Her Magazine January 2008

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