CPA chief executive Peter Sewell

THE intellectual property industry has become the latest victim of the global credit crunch, according to a survey carried out by Jersey-headquartered CPA Global.

Law firms are seeing reduced volumes of IP work – typically involving patents and trademarks – as companies tighten their budgets and put pressure on resources, according to the State of the IP Industry Survey 2009.

The survey was commissioned by CPA in association with its IP Review magazine amd gathered responses from over 200 professionals worldwide between the end of March and the beginning of May. Of those who responded, 51% said the credit crunch was having an adverse effect on their IP strategies. Nearly 68% of legal firms said the economic downturn had hit their own workloads.

However, a majority of in-house intellectual property departments say that the number of IP rights they are filing has stayed the same or increased, with growing pressure to ‘patent everything’.

CPA chief executive Peter Sewell said in terms of profitability the core business was up by 25% to 30% on last year and that three large paralegal support contracts had now been secured with companies or legal firms in the United States and Europe.