In an index rating nations on their use and treatment of intellectual property and innovation, Sweden was overall ranked as high as no. 5 barely surpassed by Japan, Germany, the UK and the US. Sweden thus maintain its high ranking from 2016 IP index, while France has been pushed down to 6th place by Japan.
In 2017 Sweden gets credit for introducing new enforcement mechanism and specialized IP courts to better combat counterfeiting and piracy. However, Sweden still suffers from its lack providing resource mechanisms for combatting copyright infringement online illustrated by the 2016 court ruling in the “Bredbandsbolaget” case. Sweden is praised for a strong and sophisticated national IP environment.
Worth high lighting from the IP index 2016 and a Swedish perspective was that Sweden, being a first timer in the index, was identified together with many “high-income” economies in Europe such as Italy, Poland, and Switzerland, as still having unsolved challenges regarding to Copyright protection due to the absence of policies to more effectively combat online piracy. On the down-side, Sweden had a relatively high degree of illegal downloads and streaming, the Pirate Bay court proceedings was specifically high-lighted. On the up-side, Sweden, Switzerland and South Korea had high patenting rates. Sweden was further recognized as having excellent research institutions, strong academic-business collaboration, robust public and private spending on R&D, accessibility to VC funds, skilled work force and educated researches.
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