New figures published
today (31 March 2014) show that UK business is building success through
knowledge and creative assets.
New figures published today (31
March 2014) show that UK business is building success through
‘knowledge’ and ‘creative assets’. Investment in
‘intangible’ assets has increased by more than 10% to £137.5
billion from 2009 to 2011 and nearly half of this investment was protected by
formal Intellectual Property Rights. Of this, 46% was protected by copyright,
21% by unregistered design rights and 21% by trade marks.
Data shows investment in
intellectual property and ‘intangible’ assets is growing and
continues to outstrip investment in tangible assets, such as buildings and
machinery, which fell slightly from £93 billion to £89.8 billion.
The figures signal the growing value UK businesses attach to knowledge,
innovation and creativity.
A second report published today
(31 march 2014) outlined the government’s response to improving the
understanding of IP assets and their value to help use them more
effectively when accessing the finance needed for business
growth.
Minister for Intellectual
Property, Lord Younger, said:
These investment figures show
the strength and value of the UK’s creative and knowledge-based
industries. Continued growth in investment in ‘intangible assets’,
along with the fact that nearly half are protected by formal intellectual
property rights, demonstrates that some UK firms do understand their real
value.
However despite these positive
figures, as the economy grows a real challenge remains for firms to understand
their intellectual property and how it can help them to access funding to
invest in the first place. The government has set out an action plan, to help
address the missed opportunities and help businesses, and the lending
community, to realise and maximise intellectual property
assets.
The government’s response,
to the Intellectual Property Office commissioned ‘Banking
on IP?’ report sets out a range of recommendations for
government and industry to take forward. These recommendations are designed to
break down the barriers to access for finance for businesses who want to
protect their IP.
The recommendations
include:
- building understanding
of IP in businesses and financial services sector through improving
bankers’ training, and using existing tools and new case studies, to
increase awareness
- supporting a productive dialogue
between sources of finance and IP-rich firms by developing
an IP Finance toolkit
- creating a system to increase
lenders’ confidence in assessing the value and risks
of IP assets through developing appropriate insurance policies,
assessing existing IP trading platforms and reducing risk through
better IPfocused credit scoring
The estimates of investment
in IP rights were produced by Jonathan Haskel, and Peter Goodridge of
Imperial College, London and Gavin Wallis of the Bank of England. They build on
work commissioned by NESTA to estimate intangible investment by UK
business as part of the ‘Innovation Index’.
Notes to
editors:
-
The “Estimating UK
investment in intangible assets and Intellectual Property
Rights” and ‘Banking
on IP: an active response’ reports are available on research
pages of the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) website.
The IPO is within the Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills
(BIS) and is responsible for the national framework of Intellectual Property
rights, comprising patents, designs, trade marks and
copyright.
-
The government wants to make the
UK the best place to start and grow a business. In the autumn it will launch a
public campaign to celebrateGREAT
British business success stories. The government wants to inspire
other small businesses and point them towards the support that can help them
grow. It will also launch a new strategy for how the whole of government will
back them. This will set out a range of measures to continue helping budding
entrepreneurs and existing businesses succeed.
-
The government’s economic
policy objective is to achieve ‘strong, sustainable and balanced growth
that is more evenly shared across the country and between industries’. It
set 4 ambitions in the ‘Plan for
Growth’, published at Budget 2011:
- to create the most competitive
tax system in the G20
- to make the UK the best place in
Europe to start, finance and grow a business
- to encourage investment and
exports as a route to a more balanced economy
- to create a more educated
workforce that is the most flexible in Europe
Work is underway across
government to achieve these ambitions, including progress on more than 250
measures as part of the Growth Review. Developing an Industrial
Strategy gives new impetus to this work by providing businesses,
investors and the public with more clarity about the long-term direction in
which the government wants the economy to travel.