Day 1: IP & SMEs in Europe: Taking your Ideas to Market -Webinar: Europe’s economy relies heavily on small & medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which make up 99% of all businesses in the EU region. As these SMEs invest their time, money, and resources in creating products or services to cater to the needs of their customers, it is only natural for these businesses to seek ways to not only protect their creations but also create value from them.

Although SMEs can use numerous IP rights to safeguard and derive value from their assets, most of them are unaware of these assets and the value they hold. Data from the EUIPO shows that in 2019, 38% of the European SMEs did not register their IP rights due to lack of awareness about IP and its importance. The data also suggests that while 25% of medium-sized IPR holders valued their intangible assets professionally, only 20% of small and micro-sized IPR holders did the same. Among SMEs that registered their IP rights during 2019, 54% witnessed a positive impact, including a substantial increase in turnover (39%), enhanced reputation (52%), and ability to enter new markets (37%).

The event is being organized on the sidelines of the World IP Day 2021 on the theme outlined by the World Intellectual Property Office.

Key-points to be covered in this webinar:

1. How can patent intelligence help SMEs monitor competitors, markets, and tech trends?
2. How clear understanding of IP concepts is critical for building productive collaborations between Business, Product and R&D teams?
3. What SMEs should do and what they shouldn’t when investing in internal IP capability?
4. Lessons from leaders: 10 IP leadership tips on SMEs on ‘Taking Your Idea to Market’.

Key-note Speakers:

Heiko Wongel – Advisor, Sagacious Global Advisory Council, Germany
Magnus Hakvåg – CEO, House of Knowledge, Norway
Hans Hallesius – Independent Advisor in IP Strategy, Hallesius Consulting AB, Sweden
Danielle Lewensohn – Head of IP, RaySearch Laboratories
Faiz Wahid – Regional Head – Europe, Sagacious IP, The Netherlands

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Webinar Transcript

Faiz Wahid  speaking- A warm welcome to everyone! We started this broadcast little bit premature but I am glad that you are all here. My name is Faiz Wahid. I am the regional head-Europe at Sagacious IP. And, your host for this conference on the topic “IP and SMEs in Europe: Taking your ideas to market”.

The event is hosted on the side lines of the World IP DAY 2021 which was observed on 26^th of april2021 by the world IP organization or WIPO as you call. And Sagacious is a proud partner of WIPO through their WIPO green program.

We make every effort, every year to host an event that will help promote IP awareness in our network. And this event is the first ever dedicated event from Sagacious which has been hosted for European audiences.

We are very delighted as we are supported and joined by distinguished speakers from eminent organizations. And, I am also glad that Sagacious IP could partner with Hallesius Consulting and House of Knowledge. They supported the idea of hosting this event from its early stage. And, they also helped in organizing it together.

I am also glad that Sagacious is hosting this event today. We have a full panel with HEIKO, MAGNUS, HANS AND DANIELLE.

Introduction: Sagacious Research

As some of you may know Sagacious IP is a global IP research and consulting firm. The firm is globally spread out with offices across US, Canada, Japan, India, China and clients across almost 60+ countries. And, we work with over 300 full time analysts. They work across multiple technologies and providing full service, capabilities in the domain of IP.

I should also mention that the Europe Footprint is also very strong for us. Although, our presence has just started about two years back in Europe. We have over 200 clients here. And, it has been an interesting opportunity to engage with companies. And, learn about how IP practices are in this region.

Through this event we are trying to raise awareness about IP knowledge. This has been honed by Sagacious IP and our partners over several years of working with inventors, R&D organizations, IP departments, and IP log practices.

Introduction: Speakers

Today, we have a full line of speakers as I mentioned. We have HEIKO WONGEL who is an advisor at Sagacious IP. And, a former director of Patent Information at the European Patent Office.

We have MAGNUS who is the CEO of HOUSE OF KNOWLEDGE based in Norway. And, we have HANS HALLESIUS who is the independent advisor in IP strategy from HALLESIUS CONSULTING from Sweden. He is also the former head of IP at ELECTROLUX.

Finally, last but not the least you will hear lessons of leadership in IP from DANIELLE DIWINSON. She is the head of IP at RAYSEARCH LABORATORIES from Sweden.

So, there is a full packed line of speakers. And, before I jump into the overall context and do the presentations, I want to make some housekeeping announcements.

One is that questions we will take at the end of all the presentations. So, please keep posting your questions. I will keep track of that and I will address it to the right participant hopefully. Please also mention the name of the person whom you want to address the question to, in the question box. It should be on the right side of your screen.

The second thing is we also try to enable a networking lounge, a virtual networking lounge through Kumospace. So, there is a link that you might have received in your emails at the time of registrations. The URL is kumospace.com/sagaciousipeurope. I will post the link in the chat for everyone’s benefit.

Post this event, you are welcome to join there. We’ll chat with fellow attendees and some of the speakers who will join us there.

Introduction: Context of the Webinar

So, great to have you all, as you know the context of this event is the IP and SMEs. We know that European economy heavily relies on small and medium enterprises. Almost 99% of the businesses are SMEs in EU region. And, SMEs invest their money, time, and resources in creating products or services. These products/services cater to the needs of their customers. It’s all only natural that these businesses should think to protect their creations and also create value for them.

Some of the statistics just to put the things in context with the EU IPO data that we know the report was done in 2019. But, we know that almost 38% of the European SMEs did not register their IP rights. That is due to lack of awareness about IP and its importance.

About 25% of medium sized IPR holders, value their intangible assets professionally but only 20% of small and micro organizations do that. And the third and key important insight is what do they, do with this IP.

And, SMEs we see that almost 54% who registered their IP witnessed the positive impact. There were substantially increased word, enhanced reputation, and ability to enter new markets.

So we see that SMEs can use IP for their benefit and today’s panel is going to talk about different aspects of how you can engage organizations, how you can enable organizations to think IP, how you can use the patent data that is already available, to learn from it about your competitions about your market, about the things to achieve, and also whether an SME should invest in building in IP function in house or externally?

So, each of the speaker is going to address that. I will also give a brief introduction so that the context is set and speakers can share their thoughts. And post that we will have a Q&A session.

Initial Remarks: Heiko Wongel

Let me also mention that as this event revolves around SMEs. We will be discussing challenges and solutions. These will be of wider interest to you and other organizations also. So, I am sure that other people will also benefit from it.

Before starting with individual presentations I would just like to invite and this is a little bit impromptu because I have not informed our speakers about this earlier but I would like you to kind of share a quick one minute thought on, “Why you think IP is important for SMEs?”, just as your initial remark on this session before we enter into the presentation. So let me start with the HEIKO First.

Heiko Wongel speaking- Yes, thankyou FAIZ.

When it comes to SMEs, I have been in contact with this area during my time at the EPO. What is remarkable is that most of them know that the patent system exists. And, they consider patents something that they could do or could not do. Also, they consider this mainly a legal question. A legal subject and why as you said some of them don’t even bother to register their IP.

On the other hand, what is even less known is that you can gain knowledge from the data available in Patents. And, this is a resource that is not very much exploited yet by SMEs. And, I would like to expand a bit in my talk about the possibilities that exist for SMEs. Plus, also for other companies to profit from the knowledge that they can find in public databases. And, to make this useful for their business.

Initial Remarks: Magnus Hakvåg

Faiz Wahid speaking- Great, MAGNUS could you go next?

Magnus speaking- Yes. So, SMEs are small. And, this is not related to what I’m talking about off the spot. As SMEs are small, they can take less damage. So they need to be more aware of what’s happening in the market, falling off, we’ll talk about.

The other part is that in order to be able to use the benefits of being small, they need to also be able to be passing unto something that they need something to fend off with or attack with or use law strategically, hopefully. Then the large entities so, has difference and more I would say, a loss approaches to how to do it. And, you can also take more damages.

So that’s really off the mind, really fast answer to that, and I’ll continue. It’s a bit different answer afterwards, Lead different topic.

Initial Remarks: Danielle Lewensohn

Faiz Wahid speaking- Yeah, thanks. DANIELLE, could you go next?

Danielle Lewensohn speaking– Sure, I’m gonna actually use the quote that I have in my presentation, because I think it’s quite suitable. And, its approach is mapped into our incentives. The founder of Spotify said that the value of your company is the sum of all the problems you solve. And I think that’s quite appropriate. SMEs are solving a lot of problems that is not currently solved by the market.

So just leaving your IT Stuckey are not rendering, not considering it. It’s really devaluation of your company. So that’s mine, 5 cents on this.

Initial Remarks: Hans Hallesius

Faiz Wahid speaking- Great! Thank you. And, HANS, your expert views on this?

Hans Hallesius speaking- One of the first things that came to my mind, when you said this is research shows that a strong IP system is actually a very supporting avenue, e-commerce, the smaller companies in relation to the big and ruling ones. So it is an opportunity that actually helps smaller companies grow and prosper. So, that’s one thing.

The other thing is, of course, it is challenging for a smaller company, with any expert area. And, IP is a complicated area to build up that capability. But, if you can do that and we live in a knowledge economy, it gives you a way to work smarter than others, if you’re mastering this.

Initial Remarks: Faiz Wahid

Faiz Wahid speaking- Great, So, I think what all of you are saying, and probably I can summarize, is that IP is a political aspect for any business and more so, for SMEs because they are solving a lot of challenges. and to protect their, protect themselves in the space, they need to protect their IP, their know-how and, that probably sets a good, you know Um, first level, focus on what we are going to cover today.

So, I will now move on and, invite Heiko for his presentation. And while we set up the presentation on the screen, let me quickly give you a brief on Heiko Wengle he is a baton.

Yeah, So, heiko is a patent information expert with over 30 years of experience in this space. He was the former director at the European Patent Office. And he started his career in the patent world, in around 1990 as a patent examiner in the field of lasers in optics, electro optics, and the European Patent Office in Hague. In 99, he moved to the classification departments where he headed this department from 2009 till 2011.

And from 2011 till 2020 he was the Director of Patent Information Promotion Directorate in the Vienna Office of EPO, where he owes promotion, marketing, and featuring future planning for the EPOs patent information tools, and the organization of patent information, specific events, as well as user support and training on patent information users. As I understand, he’s also a volunteer in the patent information user Group and several other things that he’s working on right now.

I think he’s very well positioned to kind of talk about how patent information is relevant and how SMEs can make use of it through his presentation today. So HEIKO over to you.

Agenda

Heiko speaking- Well, thank you for the introduction.

There is not much left to say about myself, so I can dive directly into the subject. As I said in my earlier statement, I would like to give you a little overview here of the things that can be done when patent information is being used properly. This is not limited to SMEs, but my experience has shown that these things are very little known by SMEs.

My talk consists of four parts.

We have to look at the situation of SMEs in the market of intellectual property.

Look at the reasons why the use of patent information can be beneficial.

Some very, very quick overview on how and where useful information can be found.

And also where SMEs could find support in doing all this when they can’t do it themselves.

Situation of SMEs in the Market of Intellectual Property

So, first, look at the situation of SMEs in the intellectual property world. It is estimated that the SMEs account for about 30% of all patent applications in the world. This is remarkable, especially when you consider that big players in the market. They have thousands of patents, but still SMEs have a 30% share.

It is hard for them to compete with large industry. That’s because they don’t have the resources and the means to, fight an intellectual property court case. However, SMEs using patents, either by protecting the property or by using patent information have shown to be more successful than others. And this is confirmed in a study that the EPO and EOI have published just a couple of years ago.

On the downside for SMEs, MAGNUS said it already they usually don’t have an IP department. For them, it’s rather difficult to find the information that they need in order to drive their business decisions.

Why Patent Information is beneficial to SMEs?

I’d like to take you through reasons why and where, the patent information can be beneficial to SMEs. There are some purposes, I think, that are rather well-known among companies and CEOs. Even first of, all, for technical purposes, that is to review what is already patented. And, what is already on the market to avoid the duplication of R&D. That is, by not re-inventing the wheel when somebody else has done it already.

And it can also be used to find the technology that already exists. Plus, to build your own new developments on those existing pieces of technology by other companies.

Now, on the legal side, it is necessary to review the absence of other competitors to avoid infringing their patents. Also, when other people’s patents exist to check where, such an invention is already protected and even more important, where it is not.

So these are things that most people have heard of. But I’d like to expand a bit more on the market or business related purposes. That is information that can help people to make the good business decisions. They need these decisions to let their business thrive.

First of all, patent information can be used to keep track of what other people are doing, irrespective of the fact that they are really competitors, or if there is a patent case on the horizon, just to see what the activities are.

But it’s not necessarily only a competitive question. It can also be a productive question that can be answered by identifying new partners by just looking at, who else? Which other companies are busy in the same market that my SME is busy and this can find new partners, for example, for licensing in or out. And even independent of individual competitors just by looking at global patenting activity, this can give hints on the trends on the market or in a certain technology.

Where and How can Patent Information be found?

There are the obvious cases that I mentioned first, doing a simple novelty search by just looking at technology that exists in patents. There are several tools for this on the market. Tools which are free to use, for example, as passing by the EPO, WIPO, Google Patents, the USPTO website and many more.

We will use the EPO websites or tools here as examples because those are the ones that I know best but you can do most of the things that I’m showing here with the other tools as well.

So, a simple novelty search most people know how to Google for something that you’d like to know, you throw in a couple of keywords, and you get a number of results. However, in this case, you look, we’re looking for something that is distance measuring, using a laser very broadly, and you can see that’s a rather high number of results.

This hints at, something more that needs to be done in order to get a much better result and more focused result. All the examples I’m using here are, of course, extremely simplistic. They are just there to illustrate, what can be done. Not necessarily, how it should be done. If you want to do this properly, you need to spend much more effort than I can do here in the couple of slides.

So, this is something where you can find good documents, but you need to refine your search in order to focus on the area that you’d like to look at.

Where can SMEs find legal support ?

Now, looking at the legal questions, it’s not so difficult to find the legal information about a specific patent by somebody else, but when you look at the red box, on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. You can find the legal events that have taken place during the procedure of processing this patent at the patent office. Now, in order to interpret what this means already, you need, first of all, to understand how a patent register works, and you need to understand how the patent procedure end up at patent office works, which is again, something that’s not so easy to do, straight away.

But let’s look at the questions related to business decisions.

In this case, I have reduced our laser distance measurement query a little bit by limiting it to a couple of IPC groups that is main groups of the international patent classification. And again, in a very simplistic approach, we can look at the statistics, that you’ll see in the red box on the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.

Statistics, of those enterprises that have followed many patents in this technical field and you see the three top players Nikon, Canon and Semiconductor Energy Lab. If you’re an SME busy in this technology, here you see the big players that play a role in the market, and that have the highest market share, or at least the highest share in patenting, patenting activity.

And you can conclude that they also have a very high shot in research and development in this area, which may give you a hint on who your competitors would be, but also who your partners could be.

If, once we have identified a specific competitor, in this case, on the top red box, you see I limited this to just the last 20 years of patent activity to a specific main group of patent classification and to a specific applicant. You can see that the company column and this technical field has been rather active over a couple of years, but let’s say, during the period of the last 5 or 6 years, the activity has reduced quite a bit.

This can mean several things that might need exploring further, but, for example, this could mean that the market in this technical area is declining.

It could also mean that this company is simply withdrawing from the market by not investing any more in research.

All these are interesting and useful hints for an SME working in this technical area, to see what the big players are doing, and understanding what this could mean for your business. This could mean a declining market could be bad, but a big player withdrawing from the market, could offer market opportunities for you as an SME, depends on the interpretation.

More generally looking at market trends, it’s going to help you define your business strategy.

I’ve selected here two technical areas that are somehow related, on the left-hand side, analysing materials by optical means, and on the right-hand side, measuring by optical means. And when you look at the red lines in the graphs below, this is the patent activity per year globally over all the patent applicants.

And you can see that, on the left-hand side, the development is, well not really stable, it’s increasing a bit, but compared to the right hand side, you see on the right hand side. This technical area is much more dynamic than the other one.

Now, as a SME standing before a business decision, should you expand your activity to another technical area, because you have the development capacity to do this. Then maybe dynamic area would offer a good market opportunity again, Of course, to be observed what competitors are doing here, and where the niche for your market is. Again, as I said, these are very simplistic example, but just to illustrate what kind of information you can gain.

Now is this something you should try to do yourself as an SME? As I said earlier, most of them don’t have an IP department and well let’s say the simple novelty search I showed.

First, is something that will, with a little bit of training and a little bit of practice is something that you can try doing, at least, to get a broad idea of the technology, in the area you’re interested in, identifying competitors or potential partners, as I showed you.

Well, you could maybe find some other companies, busy in this market this could already be sufficient information. If you want to go deeper, this becomes more difficult.

When it gets to legal questions it’s much more difficult to draw correct conclusions that as I said, you need to understand the registers. You need to understand the patent procedures in all the countries.

So, I would say it’s something you can have a look at yourself to get an idea, but it would be risky to build and base your business decisions on the knowledge gained from here.

And finally, the big question, establishing freedom to operate. So, making sure that a new innovation you’re trying to put on the market does not infringe anybody else’s patent to be on the safe side. I would say this is almost impossible to do yourself.

And this requires a big expertise and also quite a lot of work to do this properly.

So, when I say this, many of these things are not things that you should rely on when doing it yourself, where can you find support as an SME?

Where can you find support as an SME?

Obviously, the patent offices, they have lots of information online, mostly free of charge. This is to get orientation, but certainly will not help you do the job.

One step further: the Patent Information Centers, the so-called public centers in Europe, which are most of the time, public institutions. Working with chambers of commerce all at universities, they are there to help people understand patent information or understand intellectual property much better.

Sometimes they will be able to help you do part of the work. Sometimes they will be able, at least to tell you where to go and what to look out for. The EPO has a directory of all those public centers on their website.

The worldwide equivalent is the Technology and Innovation Support Centers supported by WIPO, mainly in developing countries. So, if you’re in a developing country, these are the places to look out for and WIPO has also has a trajectory of those.

But as I said, many of these activities are let’s say critical for your business and the wrong decision can cost quite a lot of money. So when it’s really important, probably there’s no way around getting the help of an IP professional to do the analysis, the landscaping for you. And, well, as it happens, our hosts today, SAGACIOUS IP, is one of those IP professionals that can provide that kind of service.

Finally, when it gets really serious and an SME wants to file a patent on, it needs to defend themselves against the competitor, in the patent case, of course, what you need is a patent attorney. But as we all know, there’s also a price tag attached to that.

So this concludes my little and very quick overview of the information and the hints you can gain from looking at patent information from different angles.

I hope it was useful to you, and I thank you for your attention, and back to FAIZ.

Faiz Wahid speaking- Thank you, thank you, HEIKO. So I think a good overview to get started in terms of searching for competitive technology related and market related insights, and I can see some questions flowing in, but I will hold onto that and ask you those questions later.

I will probably move to quickly execute one poll..

I’m just posting a poll here, for our audience to kind of quickly respond and see what they think about this question.

Poll 1: Do SMEs use Patent intelligence to monitor competitors, markets, and tech trends?

So you have, let’s say a few minutes, actually, a few seconds, to respond.

Already 29%, 32% are working, so if you haven’t, please just respond to it.

And I’ll leave it there for another few seconds.

OK, almost 50% have voted, another 50% see if you can.

Ok, it’s about 60%, so I’ll stop here. I will show this view, the results at the end HEIKO and ask you question on that later on.

Teaching Your Organization to Think IP- Magnus Hakvåg

So let me quickly move on to the next presentation. The next topic is “Teaching Your Organization to Think IP” and we have MAGNUS HAKVUG who is the CEO of the House of Knowledge. He is joining us from Norway.

And he’s going to address the question, how clear understanding of IP concepts is critical for building productive collaborations between business start-up in R&D teams, and he already has this presentation on.

So I just try to quickly brief you that MAGNUS has over 20 years of experience in protection of competitiveness with a special focus on intangibles, particularly, IP and IPR, Standardization, Innovation, and Strategy. So it’s a very unique mix of skills and, in the last eight years, he has been as convener of the ISO TC 279, which leads the global harmonization of innovation terminology.

And this work has also been in liason with his own, with the WIPO, the World Trade Organization, OECD, World Bank.

And, so, this is really sort of the, cutting edge part of innovation on how do you define the terminology so that everybody knows and understands it in the same way, so that there can be more harmony in terms of communication and understanding. At house of knowledge his work involves around what we call serious games. Maybe he will touch on it a bit and converting knowledge into demand size or bite sized demand based e-learning of IP, Innovation and Standardization.

So, he has been doing these kind of trainings for a wide range of audiences across multinationals and smaller companies, and even defence organizations. And we’re really glad to have you MAGNUS with us and looking forward to this presentation. Over to you.

Magnus speaking- Thank you.

I’ve been really looking forward to today. So let’s start going to my first slide.

So I’ll start off with what they need to know and why and then how to also deliver training. The basis of any organization is organizational culture.

For example, to establish an innovation culture in any organization, you need to establish a joint language and understanding of key concept, so all know what innovation is and how to relate it.

Well, the same goes for IP, and while IP is also part of innovation activities of the firm. As Faiz mentioned from 2013, I’ve been leading the development of the ISO 56,000 innovation management fundamentals. It’s a horribly long name, but it’s a really good document if you really want to know what something is. So, I really advise you to have a brief look at it.

It has a cost, but you can also don’t get access to it for free at ISO at the term base.

Now, this is really a reference document for innovation terminology, but it also includes IP definitions, because it was developed with the IP management document, as part of this work.

This, to support the work on establishing global best practices on innovation management, and IP management now, you may ask: Why is this relevant at all?

Well, without a clear understanding of key concepts, establishing best practices, I would say, is completely impossible.

Communication is not possible.

Understanding of perspectives of others is really, really, impossible. It’s actually not possible at all.

And also, transaction between functions of the organization, if the size of the company is so large that you have multiple functions. While, in reality, that’s not possible or at least really complicated, if it’s a small, really small one, It’s is, anyway, you’re still when everybody knows what they’re talking about.

Leading to the obvious is that co-operation between functions of the organization.

And so being at best dysfunctional if everybody don’t know what it is, so if a company wanted to work strategically with IP as part of their business strategy, you need to know well, different level, what IP is?

Now, we need to know that for different part of the organization, there are different needs.

So, what they really need to know, or you need to know, it’s, you at least you need to know the basic concept, like why there’s a patent law? Why there’s a trademark? If you’re least if you’re in the marketing department or in the top management, or what is the regulated sign or what is patently Informatica informatics like Heiko talked about.

Well, if you don’t know what it is, you will know how to apply it, and they make use of it in your day-to-days operations and you will standard, your work.

You need to know why to do this.

It’s not always necessary. We need to know how the value depends on the size of the company and the function.

This is where if it’s a larger SME, there might be somebody having responsibility for this while you need to know, at least, so much that you need, You know, when and who, to contact.

If it’s a smaller entity, well, you need a bit more, and then to the point where you need to know, when to contact the external consultants or governmental functions, who can all give you some additional support for this.

Now, what is essential is that there is a need to define, and establish an organizational awareness level meeting.

What are the learning objectives, and what do people need to know with different functions?

Walk through the top clients what do they know, those making strategic decisions. And what do those people more on the operational level relate in those?

And those developing innovations, while most of anybody and an SME, would be involved in doing different kinds of innovation activities. So they need to know at least something.

We need to I would say set a minimum requirement and then potentially that could be a need to establish, what do you need to learn in special situations?

Sometimes that might be just communicating to those being in charge of a CPR part of the R&D team or it’s needed to know when to ask the Patent Office as for assistance or external consultants or firms providing search data?

Like normal day-to-day versus suddenly being responsible for innovation project? Well, there’s different needs, so we need to adjust and know what do we need to know, given by function.

And I don’t have to really know everything at the minimum level.

Sorry, I don’t need to know everything at once, but I need to know when I need to know more, and when to and whom to contact.

The saying goes, If I would be to training the top minds, within the firm wall, it needs to be concrete. And, you need to have some deliverables, and knowing how to make use of them as your knowledge.

When planning is also essential to measure the impacts and efficiency of, well, if you want to train your, your place meaning, we need to establish, some indicators, because we need to know that. what we applaud and the volume invested, actually, it’s well spent.

So we should at least establish an indicator sample like stickiness, and it is quite interesting variable because it says something about how much I really remember after a certain time span.

To measure stickiness over after let’s say you did your training. I will do it just brief, tests. Say, what do you remember what they didn’t really understand, and then after, let’s say, three months, although, we do the tests. Normally, and whatever people remember after the long time is feeling. So what you will remember, it would be the feeling of drinking horrible coffee if it was an offsite training, and the potential anxiety.

The other part, which will be relevant to introduce when measuring the training with a confidence, because all those people that’s being taught or trained, do they feel that they can handle IP, when being exposed to IP? Its not just about being evolved, we can say to you how you do it?

Went for delivering training in any form, the way messages are delivered, information is always good to, while add some reflections, because just information is the wall, that’s information, I just simply stick.

It needs related to stick, to context. And then stickiness and confidence will be, well, a bit better.

If not, it would be really inefficient, so you might want to combined just delivering information with a bit more when blending in. Anchoring insights with what you’re doing your normal work day and what a work day of your colleagues.

You would notice an increase in their confidence. You might want to consider this one applying a company, internal training, even though it’s a smaller company.

I want to introduce a new concept.

Organizational Learning

It’s called organizational learning, which is what you should aim for. It’s part of structural competence.

Planning and learning meets the management system at something SMEs while all of them have a Management System. How you control quality, How you control your finances like your accounting system.

But it also lets you do something on the same thing when I pay and innovation, because then, it’s starting to be really interesting.

In the intro video to this webinar, I mentioned something about Stand on the ice of the six styles, and it’s a good starting point for aligning what stuff acts and to get a clear and joint understanding, what I introduce as absolutely essential.

Now we also have a innovation management system standard and you’ve got an IP management system Standard, it’s the ISO 56002 and IP 56005 and a couple of European standards.

Those are bringing structural competence on IP income tax into the firm and that makes it really easy because part of this is establishing what does the different people need to know and how does the different functions co-operates?

This is brilliant because it established organizational learning, legitimacy, awareness and capabilities.

So, of course, it’s also easier to applying training or teach or to educate when it’s part of a structure because it belongs somewhere.

The deepest formats of training when introducing apply training at the terms the information passing knowledge and operational abilities and capabilities defeat the berber.

The work day, bite sized leading will be the power most efficient.

Especially if you want to go large scale, we’re reaching all employees of the funnels, it’s cost efficient also, because that’s what really doesn’t interfere with day-to-day business.

To give applying knowledge, you need to go a bit beyond then for example, which mentioned what we also do, is doing, say, escape.

That would be the best choice if they’re designed properly.

Closing Remark

Now, that’s a closing remark.

If you’re the train in the body, you need to start at the level of those who want to train, meaning, you need to focus at the level they are.

So we shouldn’t focus on the expert level, because then nobody needs to be at that, they need to be trained to the level where it can function in their function.

We need to lead people to where they need to be. Now started without this or all using some of what policy might be a fit for fine, then. Let’s back to your sites. Thank you.

Faiz Wahid speaking- Thank you, Magnus.

I have a few questions and I will hold onto them. But I do have a poll, which is related to your topic, which I’m going to launch now. So let’s see what people have to say on this particular question.

Poll 2: Within your organizations, does there exist a common understanding of IP among business, product and R&D teams?

I’ll leave it open for another 20seconds.

Just a few more responses, and then I’ll close this.

OK, I’ll close the poll, and I’m going to share that view at the end, Magnus. Then, you can also take a look at it and comment as to why the responses might be in that order. Thank you for your presentation, and let me move on to the next presentation by HANS.

Summary- Faiz Wahid

What we have, got till now is, about what organizations can, what SMEs can learn from patent, patent data, What, you know, how they can organize the teams, how they can ensure the team, to think about IP in a , in a, in a way, that is, common, for them, to be more productive.

And, the third important question for, from an SME’s point of view is, is it really worth investing time and resources, when you’re doing research, product development sales is investing in IP, Also, an important opportunity area for those SMEs and to address that topic.

Establishing a Lean IP function to manage innovation outcomes, I have HANS Hallesius, who’s an Independent Advisory in IT Strategy at Hallesius Consulting. And he’s a leading authority in strategic IP management.

Hans has been the global head of IP of the Electrolux group where he spent almost over 14 years. He has also held the leading positions with European IP law firm AWA. And, currently he is also a member of the Advisory Committee to the PRB which is the Swedish patent and Trademark Office and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Swedish IP Law firm IPQ.

Now, he’s joining us and I am inviting him to continue with his presentation to help us understand what SMEs should do and what they should not do when investing in internal IP capability. So, Hans, over to you.

Hans speaking- OK, thank you guys.

What should an SME do when it comes to establishing an IP function here?

Just to mention that I’ve been working with large multinational Electrolux for many years. But I also have before that quite a lot of experience in supporting SMEs and there are similarities, but there are also differences.

What do you need to build up for SMEs from management capabilities point of view?

So, if we look on the management capabilities for SMEs, what do you need to build up?

And, SMEs in itself, is a broad range of companies, different industries, different sizes, different business models.

So, you can’t really catch everyone in one here. But, the common denominator is often that you have a limited scale. And, with limited scale it’s difficult to acquire these special competences such as IP.

What capabilities do they need to build up?

This is then a pretty comprehensive overview of IP capabilities that I think any company needs. And we will look at this a little bit with the eyes of an SME here and I will, I’m looking at an SME journey rather here now.

So you can go for small to large, and the needs are different in relation to how be your IP needs are during that journey.

So we’re starting the core of this with a Strategy, and, of course, that’s always relevant. But I think you can do the most complicated things in trying to set strategies for IP and enormous investigations and exercises.

I think for an SME you can boil it down to two questions here, and the answers to that.

How important is IP?

First of all, I think, how important is IP? A manager today has to work with a lot of priorities, And if you ask, I paste a picture always important, but then you also see, while talent management is important, our people is the biggest asset, or the most valuable asset we have, digital change. We need to move more digital that comes then here, also.

Or, should we work with our sales processes, our customers? How is what we live for? There are so many priorities.

You need to find where in that IP actually fits, and how much attention you should spend on it in the organization.

What IP does for and against us?

With that, I think, also comes the second question, How is IP important? What does it really do, for us and against us? And, so, with that understanding, where does it impact the business success?

Which functions, processes, & products are impacted? Which initiatives? When you get an understanding of that, you can also scope how important it is because it may be a secondary supporting issue to a number of different places in a company.

If you said those things a little bit, I think you have easier to also understand how to move forward and also with the other.

Moving forward and looking at portfolio, and I think portfolio is for many companies, what they see with IP, that’s maybe their first encounter with IP. We have a patent. We have a trademark we have, We have something to protect our business and that’s how IP is often seen in the beginning.

I think it’s important when you go to the portfolio to also build up the ability to scrutinize it from a business perspective. We shouldn’t just have a patent because we just happened to make an invention. It should be something we actually make money on.

So, so, do you have a portfolio that actually supports your business now, but even more important, your business in the future?

Do you know if you are extracting value from your portfolio, or is your portfolio value creating this can be and do you have exclusivity positions? That gives you also opportunities to have higher margins on products.

Do you have IP rights that others also want to have access to, so that you have a leverage in any negotiation?

Cost Control

Does it give you the value? And then, I think the third thing here, cost control, and for many in particular, smaller companies, a growing patent portfolio, or other IP portfolio may be a surprise in the cost development.

Um, the generation of costs is not necessarily totally transparent, and for companies, and it may seem quite in predictable, even though there’s actually quite some predictability, but the drivers are not always visible, don’t let yourself be surprised by sudden high cost races in relation to this, require that you get that support from your providers, and make sure that you understand what’s going on.

Then moving to the risk side and risk is extremely important to, to understand. IP risks may kill small companies. If you’re doing really bad things and you’re not in control of what you’re doing here. Make sure you understand which IP risks you typically face. Which processes, what is the likelihood of risks here and what are the potential consequences?

What is the likelihood of risks here and what are the potential consequences?

Here, it’s not only about understanding worst-case. Worst-case scenarios are good to understand, but you can’t build the strategy on worst-case scenarios only, then you would not do anything else. So you need to understand likelihood and consequences and you should have a plan for how to manage risks if you are indifferent to difficult situations, but make sure you understand what’s applicable to your industry, your company, your situations.

Then to people, organization culture here comes a little bit to what mine has talked about also. I think one of the key abilities for the organization is the ability to identify relevant IP situations.

When you face an IP risk, when you face opportunities, opportunities that also may be critical that you cease and actually protect things in the way you should. If you don’t have that ability within your organization, you are in as says, IP blind and it is difficult to do the right things there.

But you can build this up, it’s about people knowledge, of course, but it’s also other organizational knowledge set description, so processes, checklists, and the involvement, all external support and service, external IP experts.

And I’ll come back to external IP experts because I think that is what you need to rely on very much in your early stages. At least as an SME and you need to be able to bring them in a good way.

And then, next layer of knowledge, I would say, here, and in the organization, is to understand the business impact of different IP situations.

If you have the understanding of that, you are more able to make smart decisions and work more strategically.

And then, like always, you need to sort out organizational responsibilities. I am not a big fan of blaming up a small expert organization for a very small company too early in the stages here. But you need to have, you need to have strategic connections to experts, and you need to have operative connections so that you can make sure that people know who’s responsible and who takes care of different situations.

And then to infrastructure, which is in this case, it’s the processes, it is suppliers and it’s tools. For an SME I think this bolts down very much to have good expert support first of all, and you need to be able to rely on that, and, and you need also to have a pretty good ability to manage IP experts, service providers in this area.

Relevant Processes

And then if we talk processes, I think, the most relevant process is where you have most risks, where you have most important opportunities, though you need to secure that. You have not only process descriptions in general, but also a good clarity on the IP site with those processes.

Then finally, the third part is ultimately all IP, more or less, is about having the opportunity to sue someone else. So it’s all about third parties in many ways here.

How important is this for you? How good are you in managing relations to competitors, suppliers, co-operation partners? Do you have contractual support for doing this in a good way? Or are you good at managing information flow here? And do you need to co-operate? Do you need to litigate? Is there a conflict, here? The way you’re managing this is extremely important. Is this the end?

It depends on the company of them. But if this is here, you need to put some focuses. And here’s also a question that comes to the portfolio. Are you able to use IP to leverage negotiations with other third parties? Or do they have stronger portfolios than yours, and you are in a, in a defensive position that?

So this is a high level overview of capability needs, but how do you then prioritize in all this? And in my view, you need to start the talk in the early stages of the journey as a smaller SME here. You need to prioritize your capability to identify IP risks and IP opportunities.

Make sure those processes or what and where you really have those risks and opportunities, that those are also well covered. So that you have the right knowledge, you have the right access to IP experts, and that you actually embed them quite well in this.

And this is typically processes related to innovation, product development, co-operation, launching new technologies, naming processes, and so forth. So, that’s the priority, number one. Priority number two goes to strategy, and I would say, a way of getting strategy embedded in this, in a practical way without doing too much theoretic exercises around it, make sure that there’s an understanding of how IP impact your bases so, that all the people that actually meet the IP, know about what’s going on.

Then, I think you need to have experts in here in the game, one way or the other. I think you need to partner with advisors.

It’s difficult to build up this competence if you’re a small company, and it’s difficult for a one man show, also, to have this, unless you already have quite some experience, it’s difficult to develop someone without an IP background to be strategic IP advisor within the company.

So, I think you typically need to go outside. And I think you want to create partnerships with your IPs advisors. And I think you need to, what is not always done: You need to invite them into your business.

Make sure they understand your strategy, your competitors, and competitive situation. What are the important things in your industry, in your company, for your business model? Because if they don’t get that understanding, they cannot be strategic support here, either.

On the other hand, you need to also put pretty tough requirements on strategic support. You cannot, in that case, have suppliers that say, Well, you have three alternatives, You can do this, You can do this. You can do this. Here’s some consequences. Here’s some fair some to you. You want them to understand your situation good enough to actually say with this understanding, I would probably do this or that. So that you actually get a device and not just legal opinions hand at all.

Do you need to be tough on on demanding talk, a good cost control here and good transparency on costs. And you want to have a balanced risk management support. And any legal advisor, as a tendency to say, here, here are the things pro, here, are the things, con. It may be a big risk here, but not necessarily always step forward and help you in that, because they may also assume the risk. But, by doing this, give and demand, it can also move providers from just selling package services to actually become trusted strategic advisors, and I think that is what you need.

So, partner with Advisors, in my view, there is a point where you should start building up internal IP departments. If you look on a larger company, I’ve been running a show with 35 plus people around the world. You have to have a certain size to make it relevant, also, to have people in house that are experts here. Don’t be too early on that, that, that’s my general advice.

Once you have this, depending on where you are, what’s important for your business, increase your capabilities step by step where the most important dates are, and then you will fill this map.

That was what I thought I would tell you. Thank you.

Faiz Wahid speaking- Yes, Thanks HANS I think it’s quite comprehensive overview with a very simplistic framework that you have shared. I think it’s easy to capture and keep in mind for people. So, I just remind everyone to keep asking their questions in the question section, so we can pick them up later.

And, thanks, HANS. We move to the next presentation now so we leave enough time for Q&A. So, my next speaker is Danielle Diwinson.

She’s the head of IB RaySearch laboratories and she’s going to share her 10 IP leadership tips for SMEs on taking their ideas to market. Just let me quickly give a brief introduction of her.

So she has international work ex in the Life Sciences, medtech software and legal service industries, and in her current role as the Director of IPR Management.

She’s responsible for developing and executing the IPR strategy for the organization. And specifically, she supports all R&D teams in the ideation and patenting processes.

In 2009, she started her own firm Dahlia. She consulted SMEs, universities, and other organizations on how to build and manage the R&D projects and patent portfolios. So in addition to her industry experience, as she has worked on, technology transfer at the University of Chicago, and completed doctoral studies in innovation and entrepreneurship at the karolinska Institute. And her thesis was entitled, Beyond Bean Counting.

And I think we have already experienced an eminent person to talk about some of the IP tips that SMEs should keep in mind.

Danielle speaking- Well, thank you so much for that introduction. Let’s see if my presentation is shown.

Faiz Wahid speaking- Let me launch the THIRD POLL, meanwhile, you are putting it on the screen.

So based on HANS presentation, what do you think SMEs should invest in which of the following to support their IP needs.

Poll 3: What do you think SMEs should invest in which of the following to support their IP needs?

Should manage stuff in House? Should they work with external providers? Or should it be a combination of both?

So, we’ll leave it for another 30 seconds, and then we’ll be back to Danielle.

I think Hans, Magnus and Heiko, you will be interesting. You’ll be very interested to see the, the  poll results. I think you will have some interesting remarks on that. So, you take it up during the Q&A session, and I stop this poll now, and we’re back.

Danielle, over to you.

Danielle speaking- OK, perfect So again, my name is Danielle Diwinson and thanks SAGACIOUS for the invitation.

I’ll try to keep my minutes. So, I’ll be sharing some of my experience working in IP management at RAYSEARCH laboratories.

OK, so you can move on to the next slide, please, if you haven’t been able to share it.

The next slide was about my own background. But, since you’ve heard that, we should be able to move on relatively quickly.

And again, another slide, please.

Yes. I have a mixed background: I’ve worked in IP management, in my whole career. I have worked both in industry internationally and, I’ll say in academia. I’ve had the benefit working with commercialization of academic inventions, which sometimes quite close to spinoffs and smaller companies.

And as I said, in addition to my engineering degree, I’ve had the opportunity to conduct doctoral studies. Plus, complete a thesis and looking at inventive productivity metrics.

RAYSEARCH is a software development company in the fields of cancer care, or cancer treatment.

Our core intelligence & knowledge, is how to calculate the dose, a cancer patient should receive when going to radiation therapy.

And then, coming to the company, almost four years ago, I thought, it was not such a complex problem. I thought if you had the radiation, and the body, you just direct the radiation towards the tumor. And, that was it. But obviously, it’s not that simple.

And that’s why we are in business. So our whole R&D department is working on different solution to be as precise as possible in irradiating tumors.

And if you click, we will see some numbers on the company case. So we are about 400 people. And most of us are in Sweden, but we have international presence. So, actually we have an office in New York and in Tokyo and in other places as well.

Our company has quite a fascinating history. That’s why I was attracted to the company in the first place.

Our CEO, is also the founder of the company. And, he was able to commercialize some of his ideas that he had in his PHD thesis. He took these ideas and shaped a global company as it is today, 20 years later. And, he’s currently still our CEO and main majority owner.

So, as I mentioned, we’re headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. But, we have academic and clinical partners all over the world. We also work with industrial partners and distributors.

And looking at the next slide, it’s quite evident what type of landscape we’re in.

So on this slide, which might seem very busy at first, I’m trying to show that co-author network in our business. So basically, the different little dots are people that written academic articles in the field of radiation therapy.

The reason why I wanted to show this slide is obviously to show our tight connections with academic institutions all over the world.

This also proves that we are a user, innovation driven business. Without all our hospitals and patient data that we can learn from, we wouldn’t be in business. Likewise, they are also the market we sell to.

I’ve circled Alexa and Marianne in yellow. Those are our competitors. And to, some extent, also partners, because they sell both hardware and software. We’re only software providers, so that’s some of that our landscape.

OK, so now you learn a little bit about the background of a company. I come back to the quote I mentioned at the beginning of some of you are listening. So Martin Lorentzen, who’s the founder of Spotify, I think he answers to the question about why, why innovation, and ultimately, why inventions by saying that the value of your company is the sum of all the problems you solve?

And that is really true for RAYSEARCH as well, because every year, we release two versions of our different software products, and every version would solve new problems.

And in that way, we’re sort of pushing the innovation boundary one step further.

So, in the next slide, I want to show you a model that can also try to explain the reasons why, innovation, management, and IP management.

So, here, on the, X axis we have time, and on the Y axis, you might have technology/utilization, but you could also have investment, or technology adoption.

Um, and I think this is quite a useful way to sort of explain the relationship between ideas, and ultimately innovation when you put your ideas on the market.

And if we had a few clicks here, I think there’ll be probably 5, 6 to do, That’s OK.

We’re gonna see, OK, you can stop there. Thank you.

So if we take the example of the mobile phone industry, first and curve in red, as you see, and you can call it Curve, or Horizon.

One, shows the market for mobile phones, how it starts, and it’s increasing. And all of a sudden, we might have a disruption. This disruption may be a person thinking about some new inventions, such as the Smart phone. And if you click, you can see how that happens.

So you have a disruption.

This invention takes into account mobile telephony and ads, computing functions, and all of a sudden, that market and all the innovators and all the companies need to move. They need to shift to Horizon One, to Horizon two, and this pattern is repeated in Horizon three. We might have thought of all smartphone, for instance, and the whole market wants to adopt that type of phone.

And so this is the way to understand technology development, or adoption of innovation. And if we have a few more clicks, we’re gonna see that, ideally, you should think about this early on, you should also think about, to capture your ideas already, very, very early. So I try to think about inventions as pockets of the future in the present.

Meaning that, ideally, if you’re, I started out, and it’s very, it’s very difficult to do this, of course, but as an example, you should be thinking about the smartphone when you’re already launching your mobile phone.

Does this happen by the same actor or organization? Probably not, that’s why, we have something called, creative distraction, which is no theory in innovation management, if you wanna go there and Google that.

But I’ve applied this model in order to, again, understand why, why should we be thinking early on about you know, protecting our technology, for instance, contractually your via different types of IP rights.

And if we look at the next slide. And we could be having a few clicks there, as well, please.

Thank you.

Um, and on this slide, I’ve applied this model to RAYSEARCH. As you can see from the different themes here, initially, we were a software sub subcontractor and then we moved into software licensing and now we’re moving into data to more data and service driven business.

This is one way to view the world that I think really helps to relate your underlying technology to your business model.

And, um, I mean, this is very difficult to do. It’s easy to put up on a PowerPoint slide. Say, this is how the world works. There are numerous examples of companies that have been able to rise, but then so well, because they haven’t been able to jump these innovation curves. It’s very important for people working in IP, you are considering IP to understand this.

Um, because if you, if you miss, too worrying, for instance, a patent application on your right, or an early technology, that might be fatal to the ability to further innovate and actually get return on investment.

So now you heard a little bit about the background to our company, and you’ve heard about the reasons why and model to just sort of understand that.

And now I want to talk very briefly about how, how to do IP management?

How to do IP management?

In our company It’s a one person show. Basically, I, myself am responsible for managing all the workflows. We are quite a small company, only 400 people, but that can be considered, of course, big if you’re a two man firm.

But what we do is we work internally a lot. I’ve worked with all the R&D teams.

And they are between 20 and 50 insights. And then we have an external network of excellent patent and trademark attorneys. We have IP service providers that we also obviously communicate to the different Patent and trademark offices. So this is very simplistically how our workflows are done.

And then, we come to my, sort of, A, B, C, so building a corporate IPR department. We’ve heard a lot of smart thoughts already, some of this is therefore repetitive, but I guess we can hear the once again. So the three things I thought about, there are obviously lots of things you learn.

And you think, each day of the year, so, But the three things I thought about work. The fact that you need to analyze and understand your, your industry, your business.

I would advice to build a small and relevant portfolios and also tried to communicate and integrate IPR and R&D processes in the organization. But, take, let’s take the first one, analyze your industry.

So, this is sort of a zoom in, on the bigger picture, I showed of that Knowledge network of co-authorship in our field.

So here, for instance, just zooming in and understanding that, we raised the word choice, and our competitors are working with same academic institution, that could have certain implications, but both positive and negative, but, as Hans was talking about, I mean, in terms of risk management, you need to understand this landscape. You can’t just ignore who’s working with whom here. So that’s important to understand.

And if we take the next slide.

The B, which dealt with build small, but relevant patent and trademark portfolio, so are designed portfolios.

So, here, again, trying to map out, visualize you are, you are a competitive landscape and there, of course, various ways you can slice your data. This is an example of how I slice our biggest competitors data and looked at the major areas they’re currently patenting in, but it’s of course important to do this dynamically, and we understand where are they going?

Where will they be in three years? What innovation curve will they be on, and where should we be? And ideally, it’s important to listen to different sources of intelligence, not only patent data, but combine it with others intelligence.

And in our industry, it’s really experts, advice. That would be necessary, and I mean experts in the field of radiation therapy. When they go out to conferences, we need to try to structure that unstructured data and combine it in order to understand and get a true picture of where this market is moving.

OK, and the last point, very tricky, I think, in my mind, and that has to do with, try to communicate and integrate IPR in R&D processes.

It’s not easy. You are one,  but, it’s important to try to make, make people own this. And that doesn’t happen over 24 hours, um, but you need to sort of, have, for me, 400 people. I need to find my, my friends, if you will, or people that are open, to learn new things. And you’re not gonna find that with everybody.

And then, it’s a combination of finding those people, having a leadership that thinks this is important, and understanding the cuffs that will lead to the building of Irrelevant portfolio for instance. But, you need to be out there, and you need to understand that, as I say here, inventions that I was conceived of as the patent department.

OK, next, and final slide, I believe.

OK, so those, I hope I didn’t went too much over time. I think I did, I apologize for that. I want to say thank you for to everyone that listened.

If you have a question that you want to discuss particularly with me, feel free to e-mail me. And, I hope that I can have an answer for you.

Let, be happy to discuss.

Thank you so much.

Faiz Wahid speaking- Thank you Danielle for that comprehensive overview of RaySearch. As well as on how IPR management happens. And, for the SMEs, it’s very important to see, how IP can help them forward to where maybe RaySearch is today. So, thank you for that. And let me ask all the panelists to join us back with their videos on here.

And, we will have to do a rapid fire round of questions. As we have little time, we will overshoot a little bit but not too much. And then, we have an online networking space.

I have shared the link with all in the chat. Maybe we can join after this presentation, as people want to discuss some of these points. So, let me quickly jump into the questions that I’ve received.

Question & Answers

And so, let me start with the Heiko. And, this question relates to your point about, SMEs and how they can use, probably this is little bit final question, probably applicable to all. Maybe a few of you can answer.

And they say that the question here is that it is very well understood that IPM is relevant for SMEs. So there is an upside if they go for IP. But, the more challenging question is written here. It is, what might be the down sides of SMEs acquiring IP rights? Are there any downsides to it?

What might be the down sides of SMEs acquiring IP rights? Are there any downsides to it?

Anyone of you, if you want to take out, Maybe Heiko?

Heiko speaking- Well, I understand the question such that it’s related to IP rights acquired by the SME.

So in the sense that having IP rights for your own innovations, well, as we are all in the IP.

Faiz Wahid speaking- The question is, is there a downside for having IP rights? I have heard from SMEs that many people don’t go for IP rights. That’s because they will become more discoverable to others in what they’re doing.

Heiko speaking- Yeah, the typical answer for this is it’s always it depends. If you are in an industry where it is very difficult to reverse engineer what you’re doing.

Of course, there’s always the option of trade secrets instead of IP rights when there is no chance for your competitor to understand, just by looking at your product or buying your product, to understand what you’ve been doing. This is an alternative in most industries however, I think reverse engineering is possible, and you always expose yourself, but not have an IP rights because the big question, although the big downside of any of these rights is the cost.

And, that is what requires very intensive IP management to look at and continuously review your portfolio. And, to make sure that you’re not paying for IP rights that you no longer use. All that no longer makes sense, and your market. That is, and everybody knows that the IP is, is an expensive business. And, it’s only justified if it delivers the business benefits for you. It also gives you a leading edge over your competitors. So that’s that’s the one I would see in this context.

Faiz Wahid speaking- HANS was eager to answer something, So Hans?

Hans speaking- Yes, So that’s been well covered by Heiko.

So if you have useless rights, that you’re not getting any value out of it, and that can easily happen if you are just reactively maybe protecting things and you’re not scrutinizing your portfolio and erasing your business needs so that that can be bad.

It’s not about the problem of acquiring IP. And that’s us. It’s just that you should always acquire things that are useful.

Faiz Wahid speaking- So thanks Karen for asking that question.

It really provoked I think a nice overview of how SMEs should look at IP.

There’s one question for you, Hans again.

When it comes to enforcement and mitigation of risks, or litigation of risks, what mechanisms can SMEs use in the face of global corporations?

So, historically, companies like Intel were able to use that as a burden to smaller competitors.

Hans speaking– Yes. This is always a discussion and I would say, first of all, if you have IP rights that are valid, you have leverage also on the big guys that, so that’s for sure.

But, this is no excuse of not having relevant rights.

The other thing is, if you have a value right, the value on it, that’s a big player, or more big players, are interested in, you can find other partners there, because it can bring value to someone else.

So, that there is often, these kind of, Oh, it’s no idea, because the big guys would only run your world and so forth. I’ve, I’ve not seen that happen, to very large degree.

The thing I know from large companies is, you’re also preserving your reputation, and you’re not just trying to be the big, bad guy, even when you can.

Faiz Wahid speaking– Right, let me come to Danielle on the presentation, and she talked about, you talked about disruption, and you also talked about the need for, you know, identifying it early or starting early.

In your experience, as a researcher, as well as, as a, as a manager and a Director of IPR in the company. Is it easy? Is it, is it possible to identify such kind of disruptions early on? And if so, then what kind of approach someone needs to take?

Danielle speaking- That’s the number one question of course. How do you identify disruption before it happens?

Um, I think it is possible to work structured or more or less structure, that’s HANS was saying, you know, you can work reactively or proactively. And one way to exemplify that, and in terms of whether it’s worth worth or not to put money into a patent application. For instance, I mean, you creating something that is tradeable potentially for you.

If you have a trade secret or maintain the knowledge, or you’re not putting it on a piece of paper. That might be more tricky. But coming back to the question, can you identify disruption before it happens. I think sometimes you can.

You can at least, again, try to work more structured, & lean. And, you can be more strategic.

And that means take decisions on what we’re talking about. Should you publish this? Should you keep it a trade secret? They might seem very basic, but they might have an implication three years down the line.

Um, kind of, this answers, the question of that participant.

Faiz Wahid speaking- I think what you’re saying is that whether you are able to identify disruption or not. But if you keep protecting your IP, you may still stay relevant when the disruption actually happens.

Danielle speaking- Yes, Exactly. And to be aware, not to ignore that. There is something called IPR, or not to ignore it in your contracts. I mean, equally important to try to have those eyes that you might have on the future when you write a new contract with the big or small or fair.

For instance, with your partners, what happens?

You have an algorithm, for instance. You might be licensing that from someone else. And what happens if you improve on it so much that we don’t need that? You’re already licensed into your company. And, you need to take a strategic decision on potentially overlap between your technology and previous technology. That is one decision to take. And you might also have to look at how do you handle that partnership from now on.

And that’s a way to think ahead, whether it’s going to be destructive or not, you might not know.

Faiz Wahid speaking- Ok great. Magnus let me post the results of this poll, and then ask you a question.

And You talked about?

I hope you’re able to see, There is also this poll.

Faiz Wahid speaking- Yeah. And, almost 44% said they are not sure that there is a common understanding of IP between people. 25% are sure that it doesn’t exist. But it’s still 30% say that, yes, there is in the organizations. So, you know, I want your reaction on this, on this particular poll result. And also, ask you specific question. Because, during the presentation you talked about, and you said IP, and then you immediately said IP and innovation. What is the difference between these two?

Magnus speaking- Well, first off, screen. On the on the poll pod, Yes, this is as expect that those who are not sure. I would say is in the same category, are saying, no.

Said, I don’t, if they would have known, if that’s the same cut the same set inside.

So, I will say two thirds don’t have a joint understanding. Or, they all don’t have insights. So, it says, I said it well, it’s actually good, and to all, the third needs to step up their business. And, if you could repeat your previous the last question?

Yes. Yes. It’s also, in order to clarify thing, it’s also to clarify the discussion. It’s also good to differentiate the, the assets and legal tools, but governing the assets.

So, from the always so volume for BTL co-operation on the terminology work, we agreed on IP being an intellectual asset that may be protected by law, like patents.

An IPR, would be, what is then protecting the IP that is a simplistic, are the ways that we need to differentiate the subject. I love the text that subjects.

Even though it might be also set as IP equals IPR than anything to integrate the concept of intellectual assets being the assets being protected by the IPR.

Then what is innovation? Just to make it actually really cool here, say now, what is really innovation?

It’s something new that when it realizes or redistributes value, or, new or changed and today, it’s something new that realizes its value.

So it’s just something new that generate value. That is, it’s an invention which is being used. And, the patents applies to inventions have already introduced you to the market. And somebody adopted, then, you start generating those value. That is an innovation, genetic patent innovations to patent invention because they’re confidential.

Faiz Wahid speaking- Great! A huge. I think we need to carry on that discussion later on in the networking space. It still needs to be understood fully. But let me kind of post this back and probably invite Heiko to start with his comments on it. And his closing remarks on this topic. And, and go on to the rest of you to give your closing remarks.

But let me put this poll up here, which is very, probably insightful. It says that almost 70+ percent of SMEs are actually not using patent intelligence to monitor competitors, markets or tech trends.

So Heiko, starting with your views on this and your closing remarks. And, followed by Hans, Daniella and then Magnus.

Heiko speaking- Well, yes. In this poll, of course, they are not enough. The 65% percent not enough, that’s an easy thing to comment on. Because what is enough, maybe, there’s always something more you can do, but now, seriously.

As I said in my talk already, due to simply the limited resources that SMEs have, it’s very difficult for them to use all this patent intelligence.

And Of course, it’s clear, or it’s easy to say. For, for a small company, sorry, we don’t have the resources. But, often what’s missing is the idea that something is possible. In the first place, they have to come up with the idea that they can exploit this kind of data. And then, if they don’t have the resources themselves, find somebody who does kind of help them.

So, that’s why I emphasize so much on the different places or institutions. People can find support there and just ask an innocent question. I have an SME, have made this invention. I have an innovation I want to put to the market. What do I have to do and what can I do with intellectual property and intellectual property information?

And, it’s very important that all SMEs are aware that there are places where they can go to the questions. How to answer the questions, how to do the research. Intelligence, is then the second question on how much they are willing to invest in order to get this intelligence work for them.

So that’s a business in total question of any company to decide.

But, the first step is that there are places where you can go. And, simply ask a question at your local Chamber of Commerce. Or, you can put to your Public center or whatever. That all people around, with a rather low threshold to go and to at least understand what is possible.

And, coming to my closing remarks, I think that very much rounded up already. Because, that was the message I wanted to give you.

Then, at least, as an SME, you have to be aware that there is plenty of information and resources out there that you can tap.

Maybe you will not be able, or we won’t have the time, money, or the resources to tap them all. But at least you have to know what exists in order to make an informed decision to do it, or not to do it. And I hope that with this, and I’m very happy about the very different perspectives of my fellow panelists today. I think we have seen and approached the question from many different angles. And, I hope this was useful to the audience.

Faiz Wahid speaking- Great. Hans, your views and closing remarks?

Hans speaking- If I comment on this patent information thing, there is another factor, also, and it’s not only about SMEs.

We live in any information overflow, anyhow.

Companies have lean processes for very many things. So, maybe a short search in connection with a technical solution is easier to get implemented.

But, to take a step back, look on what’s out there, people don’t even have the time sometimes. And I think that’s also some things that may impact these numbers. We don’t always check things that could actually help us.

And the other thing is: so IP, should you be scared of IP? I think I could almost see that through one of the questions here.

I think the industry you’re in, the strategy you have, gives you whether IP has relevance for you or not. It’s an opportunity to try and manage that better than your competitors and other players.

You can choose to avoid IP without saying, I’m not going in for innovation. We’re going to do the things that people did 20 years ago, and so forth, that, that’s possible. And that’s one strategy.

But if you’re on other strategies, this is opportunities that if you can manage this better than others, you have an upside of it.

That was my words.

Faiz Wahid speaking- Yeah. What do you think, Danielle?

Danielle speaking- Lots of wise words being said today. I just think I want to add that again, re-iterate, ask around.

Don’t only ask one patent law firm, ask 10, if you need to. I personally, I went in with the approach of them strategically to actually sign up on the patent law firm. I could stop on European patent attorneys.

To avoid our competitors from doing the same, so to speak that I might have stuck to 80% that was core strategic, once. Because, we have the resources to do so. I know like your smaller company, you might not have that.

But the message I take from that sort of enriching experience, talking to many is that you’re going to meet some people that are gonna be in house of experts to advices for you. And, you’re going to meet others that are very good experts on the EPC, on the patent law and we’ll get you a patent.

But sort of, it stops there, they will not have that holistic view. And you need both of these. So my advice to myself and to you, is to ask many. Don’t only knock on the patent trademark offices doors. There are lots of different features in the IP jungle. You want to visit a lot of them.

Faiz Wahid speaking- Great, Magnus, forward to you.

Magnus speaking- Yeah, just could not repeat what’s said. I can say, Admit and use a second opinion.

So, demo A, includes a second opinion on those, which are the most essential.

So, because that’s a great learning experience, you learn from other’s learning. And, they can find the small, little hole which is missing. And, then the first list completes and life is good.

Faiz Wahid speaking- Great. So it’s about learning, it’s about teaching and it’s about establishing something internal. And it’s about the ABCs, which Danielle talked about.

So great, thank you to all the speakers for their insightful knowledge sharing sessions.

Thank you to all the participants who stayed with us, almost 60 minutes over time. And before we close, I must mention that tomorrow, again, we will connect. We will have three presentations on technology scouting and technology transfer by Alejandro Sanz. Plus, we talk about sourcing of IP by Anant Kataria, who is the CEO of SAGACIOUS. We also talk about protecting innovations within an ops by Oliver Dannenberger who is our partner at Abitz. So please join us tomorrow as well.

And I hope this will be a learning opportunity for all of us through these esteemed speakers. They have been able to share their knowledge and guardianship with us. Thank you everyone Heiko, Hans, Magnus and Danielle for joining in and to all the participants who stayed with us.

Thank you, and I have posted the link to the, the networking lounge. We haven’t used it till now. And, also we are really keen to use it. So, please join us for at least for sometimes, so that we can try this new tool. And also, interact there. Thank you, everyone.