Small and Medium Enterprises: Management of Intellectual Property Rights in Nigeria

Abstract

It is important that SMEs assess their intellectual property and develop policies on the management of intellectual property rights to effectively and efficiently maximise the use of intellectual property rights in relation to threats from competitors. Managers sometimes use their IP rights to suppress other competitors from engaging in the production and distribution of products covered by the IP rights, thereby having the monopolistic power to raise prices of the products to increase profits. This study examines four ways managers at SMEs can adequately manage intellectual property rights which include (1) acquisition (2) exploitation (3) monitoring and (4) enforcement. One of the key conclusions of this study is that Managers should continuously check IP databases to determine the status of their intellectual property rights and whether there is any infringement on their intellectual property rights. Infringement of intellectual property rights can result to huge financial losses as a result of mass production, cheap and substandard copies of original products.