The agreement covers activities such as training in intellectual property (IP), knowledge sharing, event participation, and awareness raising. This collaboration is part of EURADA’s mission to support European businesses with a special focus on their IP rights.
Since 2022, EURADA has been part of an initiative called Ideas Powered for Business. The purpose of the initiative is to create a community that has the common goal of raising awareness of the value of intellectual property among EU SMEs and to encourage multilateral collaboration. As part of this initiative, there are also three working groups: Access to Finance, Digitalisation and Communication.
EURADA is among the most active partners of the latter working group: the one on Communication. As a conclusion of a one-year journey, this working group produced the Guidelines for Effective Communication on Intellectual Property.
Based on discussions within the WG between April and November 2023, the members of this Working Group agreed on some general guidelines to be applied when communicating, the importance of IP matters, towards SMEs. For example: keep it concise and to the point, use understandable language and avoid jargon, highlight challenges as opportunities – and use positive language. For example, ‘green’ and ‘digital’ are considered as being problematic by many SMEs. Experts also reach agreement on including real stories, real situations, case studies, best practices and testimonies.
It was also highlighted that when adopting an EU perspective, it is important to emphasise the importance and relevance of the matter in question, for instance, when explaining where certain regulations come from and why they matter to SMEs. When we are communicating with SMEs, we should try and minimise the ‘this is far from my bed / does not concern me’ reaction.
We are aware of the fact that entrepreneurs do not always speak English, therefore it is recommendable to tailor communications to a national hook for events that are taking place in a specific national language; and when preparing materials for businesses that do not operate abroad.
Using shared templates on real-time collaboration platforms (e.g. Canva.com) helps to maximise outreach while still giving a unique identity to the campaign, especially if translations are used.
By clicking here you can find the full Guidelines for Effective Communication on Intellectual Property.
If you would like to know more about this Memorandum of Understanding between EURADA and EUIPO and/or more about how to provide IP services to the entrepreneurs in your local ecosystem, do not hesitate to contact Giacomo Frisanco.
