IP rights support businesses, startups and research organisations to commercialise their innovations. IP rights facilitate technology transfer, enabling innovators to license or sell their ideas to others. By reducing the threat of imitation, IP rights provide businesses the time needed to build commercialisation capability.
SMEs and IP rights
- After filing for an IP right, Australian SMEs are 16% more likely to experience high employment growth than their peers without recent filings.
- Start-ups that file IP in their first year are twice as likely to experience high growth (Zhang, 2021).
- In the past two decades, the number of Australian SMEs that hold patents has increased at 5 times the rate of SMEs in the economy, a pattern not observed for large firms (Dobson-Keeffe & Falk, 2024).
Invention, collaboration and commercialisation
- Australian startups that employ in their first year a recent PhD graduate are 9 times more likely than the average new firm to eventually receive a patent (Dobson-Keeffe, 2024).
- Australian firms granted patents are more likely to form collaborations including joint R&D and joint commercialisation arrangements (Menezes et al., 2024; Nguyen & Falk, 2024).
- The flexibility given to applicants to influence the timing of patent decisions is particularly beneficial for small firms, giving them time to obtain commercialisation resources (Higham et al., 2024).
Attracting investment
- International studies estimate that patents and trade marks increase investors’ estimates of a startup’s value by around 20% (especially in the early development stage and early financing rounds) (Hsu & Ziedonis, 2013).
- Compared to their peers, Australian firms with patents obtain more of their funding for innovation from external sources (Menezes et al., 2024).
Clean energy
- Among 19 major economies, Australia is the second fastest growing destination for patent filings related to clean energy generation and storage.
- In 2023, Australia saw strong growth in patents for electrical machinery and apparatus. Chinese design filings for electrical equipment also nearly doubled.
IP and competition
- Australian patents narrowed in the 2010s, relative to patents for the same inventions granted in the European Union and United States, reversing a trend toward Australian patents broadening in relative scope.
- Australia’s past patent reforms – the Intellectual Property Laws Amendments (Raising the Bar) Act 2012 – contributed to reducing the likelihood of Australian patents being broader than their international equivalents by between 1.0 and 4.0 percentage points.
Resources
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Findings are drawn from the Australian IP Report (2022, 2023 and 2024 editions), research leveraging Australian Bureau of Statistics BLADE and PLIDA data, and referenced studies.