Leveraging Innovation Through Collaboration : IP Challenges and Opportunities for SMEs in the Context of EU-Funded Collaborative Research Projects

European Research & Innovation (R&I) funding programmes, in particular Horizon Europe, offer great opportunities for start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to leverage external knowledge through collaboration. There is a multitude of reasons why small businesses participate in EU funding programmes. Besides seeking grants to finance Research & Development personnel, SMEs consider collaborative R&I projects an ideal “Open Innovation” (OI) environment to jointly develop new technologies, products, or services. However, such multi-partner collaborations bring together very different partners from academia, research, and industry with varying motivations and interests. Collaborative R&I projects showcase a mix of plans and pathways to use project outcomes beyond the project, thus resulting in a higher complexity for Intellectual Property (IP) management strategies and good practices to meet the needs and expectations of all partners involved. This article provides an overview on the IP strategy framework and related rules, procedures, and best practices in European R&I funding programmes. n particular, the article underlines key IP challenges that typically occur in SMEs in pre-competitive collaborative R&I projects (typically up to Technology Readiness Level 6), thus stimulating and improving the effectiveness of collaborative innovation. To this end, the article presents first observations and results from a pilot IP support service provided by the European Commission specifically designed to help European SMEs to efficiently manage and valorise IP in EU-funded collaborative R&I efforts: the so-called “Horizon IP Scan.” This article provides insights to support partners, especially SMEs, to design and effectively manage IP assets in multi-partner R&I collaborations