455. Norway would first of all like to thank the proponents of the paper for their efforts in keeping this discussion on the agenda of the TRIPS Council. I will provide some answers to the questions put forward in the paper and will address them chronologically.
456. The first question asked "what country-specific information could Members share on IP and knowledge-based businesses, e.g. the number of new enterprises they have each year, an overview of the start-up landscape in their country or figures relating to their venture capital and venture debt markets, and the particular role IP plays in it".
457. The Norwegian Industrial Property Office (NIPO) conducted in 2018 an analysis of the Intellectual property rights-intensive industries and their economic performance in Norway. The analysis was performed by applying the methodology and industry ranking developed for the European Union by the European Patent Office and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO). As outlined in the EU studies, IPR-intensive industries are those with an above-average use of IPR per employee, as compared with other IPR-using industries. These industries are concentrated in manufacturing, technology and business services sectors.
458. The results show that, as in the European Union, IPR-intensive industries pay significantly higher wages than other industries, create more export revenue per capita, etcetera. Some of the main findings:
IPR-intensive industries generated 25.9% of all jobs in Norway in the period 2011-2013 (EU: 27.8%). This corresponds to 655,000 jobs.
IPR-intensive industries generated on average more than 51% of total economic activity (GDP) in Norway in the same period, corresponding to EUR 196 billion.
IPR-intensive industries paid much higher wages than other industries, with a wage premium of 53% over other industries (2013 figures).
459. We have also started to bring IP data into our standard statistical framework. A few years ago, Statistics Norway established a regular database on patenting, design protection and trademarks by enterprises. The enterprises in the database are organised by regular organisational numbers rather than by name. By using these numbers, information from other administrative registers with patenting information can be linked to each enterprise.
460. For example, we can now easily study enterprises by specific indicators, such as patents, size, age and the patenting enterprise's statistical industry rather than the patent's technology area. Given our extensive and digital administrative registers, we can look at such issues as ownership or financial structure and patenting activity. However, these are still time-consuming and resource intensive studies. At the moment, descriptive statistics are therefore more easily available.
461. Some of results we do see, are that patenting takes place in small enterprises and in large enterprises, with the frequencies being lower in medium sized firms. Design protection is mostly taking place in smaller enterprises.
462. The second question asked "what IPR-specific regulatory measures, policies and practices do Members consider to be conducive to, or even necessary for, creating new businesses, e.g. how easy is it to create a new business for young entrepreneurs and, in light of that, what is the role of IP in that process? Furthermore, what impact does international cooperation have in promoting a positive new business IP environment".
463. Awareness of intellectual property values, when to use formal protection and some insight into patent law; it translates into stronger IPR inclusion in higher education, business studies, engineering and such areas.
464. Awareness translates into the two sides of IPR: my rights and how I exercise them, and others’ rights and whether I infringe on them. In our case, raising awareness was an aim of a recent White Paper on IPR (2014).
465. The third question invited Members to share "any specific examples of new businesses, their IP-protected innovations and other IP-related assets, or successful governmental IP-related policies that help new businesses integrate into the global economy".
466. In 2012, a group of PH.D.-students and their professor at a polytechnical University in Norway (NTNU) co-founded the start-up company CrayoNano AS. With production in Asia and customers all over the world, this start-up was born global.
467. The company has developed nanowire/graphene based deep-UV LEDs for sterilization and disinfection. CrayoNano has patented the use of graphene as a semiconductor substrate. The technology platform is protected through nine priority patents. Some of the underlying results have been published in journals like Nano Letters and Nature Communications.
