Economic Contribution of Copyright-Relevant Industries in the Netherlands

The aim of the study is to measure the economic contribution of copyright-relevant and related rights-relevant industries, defined by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) as “activities or industries where copyright [and related rights play] an identifiable role”.

The assignment included adopting the methodology put forward in the so-called WIPO Guide on surveying the economic contribution of these industries, which intends to maximise comparability with studies in other countries and earlier national studies. Data from the Dutch statistical office Statistics Netherlands were collected and analyzed between November 2013 and February 2014. All results are reported for the year 2011.

The gross value added of copyright-relevant industries amounted to € 35.9 billion in 2011, or 6.0% of the Dutch Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In 2005 the contribution of these industries to the Dutch GDP was 5.9%. The international average from available WIPO studies from varying years is a 5.2% contribution to the GDP. The result for 2011 does therefore not differ much from other country studies based on the WIPO Guide.

Employment in the Dutch copyright-relevant industries is approximately 529,000 full-time equivalents (FTEs), equal to 7.4% of total employment in the Netherlands. The earlier Dutch study shows that the share of employment was 8.8% in 2005. In absolute terms employment decreased with 38,000 FTEs, which can largely be explained by economic downturn in the Interdependent Copyright Industries, such as ICT hardware manufacturing. The average share of national employment in other country studies equals 5.4%.

The contribution of copyright-relevant industries to the Dutch economy in terms of value added (6.0%) and employment (7.4%) is similar to results in studies from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries (6.8% and 7.3%, respectively). For the selection of industries to include the WIPO Guide was used.