ABSTRACT
Despite a good deal of evidence indicating the need to understand intellectual property management in small firms, little is known about how SME owners attempt to protect their knowledge assets using intellectual property rights. Small businesses, it is argued, face problems of cost, complexity, time, the need for secrecy and difficulty in enforcing intellectual property rights (ACOST, 1990; ICIP, 1995; CBI, 1997; HM Treasury/DTI, 1998) and, as a consequence, do not protect or exploit their knowledge assets and innovations fully (Cabinet Office, 1983; DTI, 1986; ICIP, 1995). Instead, small business owners tend to protect their innovations through non-legal means, such as maintaining a lead time advantage over competitors (Moore, 1996) and developing high-trust relations in business transactions (Dickson, 1996).
