Business Assistance services on intellectual property for tenants of business incubators and Technology Parks

The paper includes the results of a questionnaire-based e-mail pilot survey of intellectual property (IP) services to tenant firms in a subset of high-tech European incubators. It provides an overview of (a) the importance of IP for innovation management, (b) reasons why small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and business start-ups make inadequate use of the IP system, making a case for providing IP services to the tenants of incubators, (c) best practices concerning IP services provided in or by a subset of European incubators, and (d) range, type and modality of IP services provided to tenant firms in incubators.