Making Patents Useful to Small Firms

The EU-commissioned study, Enforcing Small Firms' Patent Rights, I represents the first time that the actual value of the patent system to firms of this kind has been investigated by direct contact with them in every country of the European Union. The present article arises from the experience of directing this research, and in it "SMEs" covers individual inventors as well as small and medium-sized enterprises for two reasons: they face the same problems and sometimes the corporate form is used by an individual inventor in the hope of tax or other advantages. Although much new and interesting information emerged from this study, it had aspects which were dispiriting. Far from benefiting them, in quite a number of cases use of the patent system left SMEs worse off than if it had not existed at all-sometimes tragically so. Financial loss was the least part of this: repossession of homes, bankruptcy, marital breakdown, even imprisonment, were included in the downside of SME patenting revealed in this survey. Very few cases were recorded where the system worked as it is theoretically meant to do, for an individual or a small firm; and for every instance where it did provide benefit, there seemed to be several where it led to actual harm.