January 26, 2010
The European Patent Office (EPO) has recently announced that it is launching a new follow-up survey to determine how the public does, or does not, use available patent information. As noted within the EPO’s announcement (link HERE), the last survey was performed in 2002-03, and identified that 70% of surveyed companies in Europe actually didn’t even use patent information. This new survey will be carried out in all of the current EPO member states (current list available HERE) plus the United States. According to the EPO, "Our target group is the innovation sector at large - including industry, public sector research, and academia. We are not especially focusing on patent applicants or patent attorneys, although some may get into the study because of the randomized sampling procedure." The private surveyor plans to conduct all surveys via telephone, which will be available in 25 different languages.
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