The study was initiated by the Serbian Intellectual Property Office and financially supported by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It was conducted between June 2013 and April 2014. The study makes use of data from 2008 to 2012 and is the first one conducted, in Serbia, in accordance WIPO’s methodology to determine the economic contribution of the copyright-based industries with the aim to make national studies in this area as comparable as possible. The methodology developed by WIPO outlines four groups of copyright-based industries – core, interdependent, partial, and non-dedicated support industries, identified on the basis of their level of dependence on copyright. It also establishes a set of major indicators – contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) and gross value added (GVA), employment and foreign trade, and lays out research standards and approaches. The WIPO guidelines were developed on the basis of the best international practices reviewed by an expert group of renowned economists. So far, the guidelines have been implemented in over 40 countries around the world.It should be noted that the objective of the study was neither to measure the extent of copyright infringement or piracy, nor to measure the impact of copyright on GDP or GVA. Instead the main tasks were: a) to identify industries that are copyright-based according to WIPO; and b) to measure their output, value added, employment, and foreign trade. The core of the study is based on official statistical data, but supplementary sources, including interviews with representatives of copyright-based industries, were also used.
The economic contribution of copyright-based industries in Serbia
