Intellectual Property: a Lever to Stimulate Economic Growth of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Accounting Aspects

With its Single Market Act (2012), the European Commission has identified twelve principal levers to boost growth, competitiveness and social progress. Two of them are intellectual property and financing of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), which the Commission considers to have the potential to give a new impetus to the Single Market. Intellectual property is a key element of the innovation policy of the enterprises. However, innovations and effective protection of intellectual property appear to be amongst the most serious problems of Bulgarian small and medium-sized enterprises. A research of the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, conducted this year in July, reveals that 53% of the companies do not invest in innovations; Bulgaria holds the 93rd place in the Global Competitiveness Index 2011-2012 among 139 countries and the 92nd place in the Best Countries for Business 2012 ranking among 134 countries. Of considerable importance for the management of innovation activities of SMEs is the cognizance of the essence and scope of intellectual property accounting items, respectively intangible assets. Some of the prerequisites for the proper accounting treatment of this specific resource group are: good cognizance of the quality characteristics of separate groups of intangible assets; the development of classification and recognition criteria; the regulation of measurement bases; the regulation of accounting and disclosure requirements. In the light of the problematic issues outlined above, an effort was made in this paper to present some theoretical, practical and applied aspects with regard to: ? the potential and the role of intellectual property as a key element for the sustainable economic growth and competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises; ? the identification of essential characteristics, scope and structure of the intellectual property of small and medium-sized enterprises for accounting purposes.