A total of 92% would either like or want to know more about IP Insurance!
ACID recently launched its own IP survey to establish if there was evidence to suggest that IP insurance is a “must have” for designers and manufacturers.
The response? A resolute “Yes” from 92% surveyed!
The ACID survey was prompted by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) ‘IP and Business Growth’ survey launched in January 2024. However, ACID raised concerns that it did not enable responses from a sizable proportion of the Creative Industries. So, to complement the IPO’s survey, ACID created their own to bridge what we feared could be a significant gap in data capture from many creative businesses who need it most.
The IPO received 83 valid responses to their nationwide survey. ACID received 91.
ACID is grateful to all who completed our survey, and it is important we share these results to drive our future campaigning with our new Labour government.
The headline points from the ACID survey confirmed that the majority of creative businesses are:
The survey was completed by a vast array of Creative Industries. Here is just a snapshot:
Accessories
Bridal
Ceramics
Crochet pattern designer
Dressmaking patterns
Education
Engineering
Garden products
Glass sculpture
Greetings cards
Illustration
Interior design
Inventors of DIY tools
Jewellery, Hair, Accessories & Clothing Packaging
Leatherwork
Lighting
Memorials
Millinery
Mixed Media Art
Pets/animals
Printmaking
Restoration
Sports & leisure
Surface Pattern Design
Toys
Transport design
Wallpaper
Woodwork
Of all respondents, 52% relied on copyright and 48% held unregistered designs. Virtually no respondents relied on patents, no surprise there. 24% on trade marks and 20% unregistered trade marks. 66% had experienced infringement.
The majority thought IP infringement blatant and deliberate.
In summary, the IPO stated that, “The resulting sample is unrepresentative of the UK business population that holds IP, with under-sampling particularly evident amongst start-up businesses. This could not be mitigated by use of sampling weights, given the small sample size. The business population that holds IP was identified using business population statistics, past IPO research into IP-intensive industries, and the 2023 IP Awareness Survey (see Annex for more detail)”.
Laura Newbold Breen, ACID CEO, said, “The insight from ACID’s survey shows not only the plethora of creative industries desperate for more IP support but that there is a significant proportion of businesses excluded from the IPO survey, so it is unsurprising that the IPO results describe an unrepresentative sample of UK IP holders, which ACID raised concerns about this at the time. It is frustrating that the conclusion is to conduct further research but I sincerely hope ACID and the IPO can embrace this opportunity to work together to expand the sampling and conclude meaningful data which can then translate into positive, proactive action for all creative industries, designers and manufacturers in the UK. It is much needed”.
Dids Macdonald OBE., ACID’s Chairman and Co-Founder, said, “For SMEs not to have access to cost effective IP insurance has put additional pressure on those innovative designer creatives who are the zeitgeist of tomorrow’s design solutions. It is they who are at the consistent behest of larger companies who copy with nothing in their armoury to take them on or act as a deterrence. I call upon Government to spearhead a national IP insurance scheme to protect one of our nation’s critical assets, our IP and the livelihoods of thousands of designers.
I continue to question the significance of the IPO rationale for survey consistency with outdated Office of National Statistics (ONS) standard industrial classification (SIC) lists over relevance. Consistency or the measurement of economic activity has no value if it misses swathes of the creative industries worth over £160 billion to the UK economy”.
The full IPO Survey.
Read ACID’s survey results.
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