Almost Half of the Canadian Businesses Have Little Knowledge of Intellectual Property: Be in the Other Half!

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office recently released the results of its survey on intellectual property awareness and use.

The purpose of this survey was to measure the general awareness of intellectual property among businesses in Canada.

The survey reveals some very interesting, and concerning, stats, including that only 57% of Canadian businesses can actually say that they know one type of intellectual property.

The most well-known type of intellectual property is the trademark. Still, intellectual property rights can take many other forms, such as patents, industrial designs, copyrights and trade secrets.

We can thus conclude that in most businesses in Canada, managers lack information about their intellectual property rights and how they can benefit from them. In fact, 82% of businesses believe that they do not own any intellectual property, which is, most likely, not the case. Indeed, every company generally owns a trademark, the name under which it sells its products or offers its services, and copyright, at least in a logo or even a website.

In light of these numbers, it is no wonder that 92% of businesses decide not to invest in protecting their intellectual property. Actually, and sadly, 42% of businesses see no benefit in protecting their intellectual property.

Why You Should Identify Your Intellectual Property Assets

All businesses would benefit from identifying their intellectual property assets and learning how to protect them. Indeed, such assets can prove to be an important competitive advantage in the marketplace in any field. For example, a business that has registered its trademark will be able to prevent a competitor from selling a similar product or service under a similar brand name anywhere in Canada. It will also ensure that it can expand across Canada, whenever the need arises, the geographic territory wherein its mark is being used, which it may not be able to do with an unregistered trademark.

In fact, more than half of the businesses that own intellectual property said that it had helped improve their results. The most commonly cited benefit, reported by 39% of the survey respondents, was the increased value that intellectual property brings to their business, including competitive advantage, reputation and trust. Other benefits cited include increased revenues (cited by 31% of respondents), improved long-term business prospects (cited by 30% of respondents) and market expansion (cited by 26% of respondents).

Don't wait any longer and find out how developing and protecting your intellectual property can help your business grow and stand out!

For more information, contact our multidisciplinary intellectual property team, which will be pleased to help you identify your intellectual property assets and to assist you with your trademark, copyright and patent needs.