Intellectual property management for small and medium-sized enterprises in the United Arab Emirates

Intellectual property management for small and medium-sized enterprises in the United Arab Emirates

This article studies the significance of IP for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and particularly Dubai, to promote innovation and increase business revenues. Many SMEs in the UAE are unaware of the importance of IP rights and are not utilizing them properly to formulate suitable management strategies to support business development and competitiveness. The article examines the initiatives, policies and programmes that were implemented by the UAE’s Federal and local governments to encourage the effective use of the IP system. It finds that these programmes are mainly providing general business assistance and IP awareness to entrepreneurs, not targeting SMEs in particular, with little coordination and few specific goals to be achieved. It proposes several suggestions and recommendations to strengthen and unify these efforts. These include reforming the UAE IP system to be ‘SME friendly’, the establishment of IP courts and the formulation of a national IP policy by the Federal Government that recognizes the importance of IP for fostering the innovation ecosystem, in line with the UAE Vision 2021.