What is a National IP Assistance Platform?

A National IP Assistance Platform acts at national or regional level as a contact-point helping local innovation actors to address intellectual property issues. It consists of a joint collaboration between the respective National Patent Office and at least one other partner organisation working directly with SMEs in the fields of innovation, technology transfer, enterprise development and intellectual property.

Our objectives

The synergies created via the joint-collaboration on a local level between the National Patent Office and the partner organisation(s) will enhance the existing knowledge and resources of the National Patent Offices and allow them to respond more efficiently to the needs of SMEs. Our aim is it to be a "one-stop shop" for answering your questions in relation to intellectual property rights, for providing IP information and for helping you to understand IP issues and to efficiently implement IP policies in your business. The national assistance platforms of the different participating countries form a network that aims to enhance and improve IP assistance, support and information actions by benefiting from a transnational exchange of experiences about successful IP activities, products and services.

Our role

We are helping and assisting innovation actors through the following activities:

• Awareness creation for a better use of intellectual property,
• Addressing intellectual property issues with respect to concrete projects or other innovation activities,
• Providing information-services to allow better use of information gathered from intellectual property information databases (helping in appraising novelty, inventiveness for technology watch, for detecting or preventing infringements ...).