By Audrey Yap

Small medium sized enterprises or SMEs form the backbone of most economies but are particularly important in Asia where the majority of businesses still lack the scale and reach of their western counterparts in developed economies as multinationals. SMEs across Asia Pacific contribute 20-50 percent of their respective nation’s gross domestic product, account for 97 percent of all enterprises and employ half the workforce across Asia.It follows that the significance of Intellectual Property (IP) to business as a whole in Asia requires an assessment of how this community perceives the subject.