Route to profitable European PATLIB centres with a process orientated business model in intellectual property services

Patent information centres in Europe (PATLIB) have to reorganise their business model because of the changing market situation for information services in Europe. It is shown, that the present approach only covers a small segment of the information service market and results in low accessible market volumes for PATLIB centres. Furthermore free-of-charge web-based patent information tends to result in difficulties to achieve cost covering prices for PATLIB services. The future PATLIB market situation can be summarised as expecting danger of reduced economic viability. Based on the specific PATLIB centre characteristics a redesign of business model is described. To generate a profitable future perspective it is necessary to focus on customer relationship marketing (CRM) for the main customer, respectively the business potential of small and medium enterprise (SME) environment. Six steps are proposed for the reorganisation into IP service centres. The first two steps are the orientation along the SME-customers IP value chain and a process oriented marketing approach. The next two steps are basic business models to meet the new process orientation. Finally the necessity and the arrangement of a tight European service network to offer top quality customer services and redesigned marketing activities is described.