Shipbuilding IPR Study

The European shipyards and the marine equipment suppliers have jointly demonstrated over the years that they are in many cases able to fight the competition through innovation. Besides product innovation, design and process innovation are the key driving forces behind the evolution of the shipbuilding industry.

Even though especially the bigger players do use both the classical instruments of IP protection and contractual clauses, a significant part of the innovations in the shipbuilding industry is not (fully) protected.

This is, however, not primarily due to the substantive characteristics of the current legal framework on the national, European or international level. Though there is indeed room for improvement (e.g. the introduction of a Community patent), overall the legal framework is in itself not inadequate for the protection of IP. Rather, the suboptimal use of the existing possibilities of IP protection appears to be caused by a range of other issues.

Download the full Shipbuilding IPR Study