The Smart way for patent information to help small firms

Abstract

This article explores the value of patent information as a crucial factor in the assessment of government awards in the UK to technically innovative small firms. The Smart scheme provides a substantial boost to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Some of this help is financial, but they also get help in other ways, for example through the publicity and marketing opportunities the winning of an award creates. Also in many cases, they get the benefit of the patent search that the UK Patent Office carries out as a crucial part of the assessment of most applications. The awards can be used in a variety of ways to enhance the chances of a business getting their project completed and the corresponding product successfully launched into the marketplace. This embraces, inter alia, many of the costs of seeking protection for, and enforcement of, their intellectual property rights (IPR).