“Mythology is the study of whatever religious or heroic legends are so foreign to a student’s experience that he cannot believe them to be true. . . . Myth has two main functions. The first is to answer the sort of awkward questions that children ask, such as: ‘Who made the world? How will it end? Who was the first man? Where do souls go after death?’. . . The second function of myth is to justify an existing social system and account for traditional rites and customs.”

–Robert Graves, “Introduction,” New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology

Fact Sheet 1 – OHIM Data

Our first Myth Vs. Reality Fact Sheet relates to the so-called data produced by the Office for the Harmonization of the Internal market (OHIM) and the European Patent Office (EPO) in their Study on intellectual property rights intensive industries’ contribution to the economic performance and Employment in the European Union, as that data is both quoted at events and in official documents such as the leaked European Commission White Paper. It’s a one-pager, and we encourage you to read and circulate, so that these data stop being quoted as credible by EU institutions.

Fact Sheet 2 – EY Data

Our second Myth Vs Reality Fact Sheet (in EN and FR) relates to some of the figures published in a November 2013 EY Report entitled ‘Le premier panorama des industries culturelles et créatives’ covering France. It must be noted that EY has since produced a similar report covering Europe and pretty much based on the same methodology. Our fact sheet ones again shows that some of the premisses used to produce the headline numbers inflate them beyond proportion.