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Creative attitudes to intellectual property

05 Mar 2008

True-life stories are often more disturbing than those based on fiction or fantasy. And here’s a true-life story that will send a shiver down the spine of every New Zealand designer…

A J Park recently commissioned a survey of 500 New Zealand businesses to find out more about their attitudes to intellectual property (IP) and their knowledge about it. 100 of the businesses surveyed in the A J Park IP Outlook™ survey were fashion and creative based companies.

The survey results for this creative sector make some interesting reading. 90% agreed that protecting IP has become more important to New Zealand businesses over recent years and 85% said IP protection gives them an advantage over their competitors.

In fact, the survey showed creative companies have a better than average understanding of the importance of IP, scoring higher than the ICT, scientific research, food and beverage, and manufacturing companies also surveyed.

So far, so good. The creative industry is after all, a knowledge based sector that has much to gain from IP protection and even more to lose from not protecting it. Greater value in creative companies will always be found in their IP than in their physical assets.

But things begin to unravel from there. Only 65% of creative companies said they know how to protect their IP. That means just over a third of creative based companies are in the dark about what they need to do to protect their IP even though so many of those know they should be doing something.

And then a staggering 42% of creative companies surveyed admitted their IP was not well protected and 40% believed they had lost business as a result.

These results reveal a strange contradiction. New Zealand’s most creative companies are losing business because they are not protecting their IP – despite the fact that they have a better understanding than other businesses of the importance of IP protection.

But the story gets worse. For some insight as to why they may not be protecting their IP, respondents were asked to identify barriers to IP protection. 69% of creative companies said, more than any other perceived barrier including cost, the biggest barrier to protecting their IP is the belief that IP rights are often ignored by other businesses.

It is frightening that nearly seven out of ten creative companies use the “everyone’s doing it” argument to justify not protecting their most valuable assets. The irony is that this is really one of the major reasons for protecting and enforcing your IP rights, not for ignoring the risk.

So why is it that the survey results tell this troublesome tale? Are creative companies so caught up in creating that they are not paying enough attention to the commercial side of their business? Are creative people not so good at running the businesses they create?

It is in the creative industry where aligning an IP protection strategy with a business strategy will yield the greatest return. IP assets are too important to ignore and leave to chance. And it’s not like the industry doesn’t realise how important and valuable their IP rights are. Creative based business needs good advice, and need to ensure they protect their IP.

Don’t let your business be the biggest loser just because you’ve neglected to protect your IP. Make sure your personal story has a happy ending.

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

Anton Blijlevens
Partner, A J Park Auckland
anton.blijlevens@ajpark.com
DDI +64 9 356 7665

An esited version of this article was published in PRODESIGN issue 93 2008