90% of small businesses not protecting their IP, study finds

Just under 40 per cent of study respondents unsure what intellectual property is

Fewer than one in ten EU-based small and medium-sized enterprises use intellectual property rights to protect their inventions and designs, a study commissioned by the EU Intellectual Property Office has found.

Among SMEs that had not registered IP rights in 2019, 38 per cent reported that this was because of a lack of knowledge about what IP is and what its benefits can be. That figure was up from 25 per cent in a previous study from 2016.