Information

The aim of the publications in this section is:

- to raise SMEs' awareness of industrial property and the institutions involved in its protection;

- to promote the experience of SMEs (Bulgarian and foreign) in actively using the industrial property system;

- to promote the innovation activity of SMEs in order to increase their competitiveness in national and international aspects.

Together with all candidate countries for EU membership, Bulgaria joined the European Charter for Small Enterprises adopted by the European Council in June 2000 in Sofia. On 23 April 2002, the European Council adopted the European Small Business Act in June 2005 in Santa Maria da Feira (Portugal). The Charter was signed on 23 April 2004 in Maribor (Slovenia), as an expression of our country's wish to participate in the process of reporting on the implementation of the Charter, in which the Member States are already participating.

The industrial property system has an impact and a crucial role in technological development by stimulating the creation of new technologies and risk-taking in investing capital in their development, encouraging the development and application of technologies, facilitating technology transfer and being a powerful tool in strategy building. This determines the need to promote it and support its effective use in the process of building a stable and competitive national economy in the context of Bulgaria's EU membership.

SMEs are among the most frequent users of the information services provided by the Office for all the objects of protection - inventions, utility models, trademarks and geographical indications, industrial designs, and are naturally one of the priority target groups targeted by the awareness-raising programme of the Patent Office of the Republic of Bulgaria on industrial property issues.