Is the Unitary Patent good for SME's?

The development if the Unitary Patent and the Unified patent court has always been accompanied by the popular narrative of reduced costs and benefit for SME's. Bjorn Ingve Stjerna has now critically tested the promises and political expectations against the reality which is now emerging and compiled his results in an article which is available for download here on his website, which further provides an impressing resource on background documents on the legislative history.

He comes to the conclusion that the alleged support of SMEs by the “unitary patent system” was nothing more than mere lip service in order to maneuver the “patent package” through the legislative proceedings as smoothly and quickly as possible.

Though this result may not come as a surprise given that the system remains essentially unchanged besides or replacing state-subsidized national courts are replaced with the supposedly self-supporting UPC, this article is a fascinating analysis showing how narratives and factoids or half-truths are capable of catalyzing political processes.

IP Enforcement Report: some real data for SME patent enforcement

For some SMEs, budgeting for
patent litigation takes up all their
time and resources

The IPKat has already reported the publication of "Intellectual Property Enforcement in Smaller UK Firms", commissioned by the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy (SABIP) as "an independent input to evidence for policy". You can read the report in full here, with some background from the IPKat here.

PatLit advises its readers that much of the Report specifically addresses the issues faced by Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) when contemplating or engaging in patent litigation. Among the other content, much of which is predictable, there is some genuine evidence of SMEs' attitudes towards enforcing patents in the form of tabulated survey results, with comments.