CONFLICT RESOLUTION, PUBLIC GOODS AND PATENT THICKETS

Post-grant validity challenges at patent offices rely on the private initiative of third parties to correct mistakes made by patent offices. We hypothesize that incentives to bring post-grant validity challenges are reduced when many firms benefit from revocation of a patent and when firms are caught up in patent thickets. Using data on opposition against patents at the European Patent Office we show that opposition decreases in fields in which many others profit from patent revocations. Moreover, in fields with a large number of mutually blocking patents the incidence of opposition is sharply reduced, particularly among large firms and firms that are caught up directly in patent thickets. These findings indicate that post-grant patent review may not constitute an effective correction device for erroneous patent grants in technologies affected by either patent thickets or highly dispersed patent ownership

A study of patent thickets

Report analysing whether entry of UK enterprises into patenting in a technology area is affected by patent thickets in the technology area

The strategic use of patents and its implications for enterprise and competition policies

This report was commissioned as a study into the strategic use of patents. In the course of its case investigations and legislative reviews the European Commission became aware of changes in the use of intellectual property, in particular the use of patents. It was noted that firms’ uses of intellectual property are becoming increasingly strategic. This raised concerns about the implications of firms’ patenting behaviour for enterprise and competition policy. The following report contains a comprehensive review of patenting behaviour, the extent to which patenting is becoming more strategic and the implications this has for competition and enterprise policies

The Bellagio Global Dialogues on Intellectual Property

Reviews Rockefeller's conference series on intellectual property and its efforts to promote policies and institutional capacities that better serve the poor, with a focus on food security and public health. Discusses global policy, development, and trade

CIFRA: Challenging the ICT Patent Framework for Responsible Innovation. D4.3: Paper to well-recognized journals

The European Commission. CIFRA: Challenging the ICT Patent Framework for Responsible Innovation. Grant Agreement No.731940. Research and Innovation Action. Call: H2020-ICT-35-201

Harmonization Without Consensus: Critical Reflections on Drafting a Substantive Patent Law Treaty

In this Article, we contend that the World Intellectual Property Organization\u27s proposed Substantive Patent Law Treaty (SPLT) is premature. Developing countries are struggling to adjust to the heightened standards of intellectual property protection required by the TRIPS Agreement of 1994. With TRIPS, at least, these countries obtained side payments (in the form of trade concessions) to offset the rising costs of knowledge products. A free-standing instrument, such as the SPLT, would shrink the remaining flexibilities in the TRIPS Agreement with no side payments and no concessions to the catch-up strategies of developing countries at different stages of technological advancement. More controversially, we argue that a deep harmonization would boomerang against even its developed country promoters by creating more problems than it would solve. There is no vision of a properly functioning patent system for the developed world that commands even the appearance of a consensus. The evidence shows, instead, that the worldwide intellectual property system has entered a brave new scientific epoch, in which experts have only tentative, divergent ideas about how best to treat a daunting array of new technologies. The proposals for reconciling the needs of different sectors, such as information technology and biotechnology, pose hard, unresolved issues at a time when the costs of litigation are rising at the expense of profits from innovation. These difficulties are compounded by the tendency of universities to push patenting up stream, generating new rights to core methodologies and research tools. As new approaches to new technologies emerge in different jurisdictions, there is a need to gather empirical evidence to determine which, if any, of these still experimental solutions are preferable over time. Our argument need not foreclose other less intrusive options and measures surveyed in the Article that can reduce the costs of delaying harmonization. However, the international community should not rush to freeze legal obligations regarding the protection of intellectual property. It should wait until economists and policymakers better understand the dynamics of innovation and the role that patent rights play in promoting progress and until there are mechanisms in place to keep international obligations responsive to developments in science, technology, and the organization of the creative community

Intellectual Property in the Twenty-First Century: Will the Developing Countries Lead or Follow?

This article continues the author\u27s contributions on the subject of intellectual property protection in developing countries, and focuses on how those developing countries with growing technological prowess should accommodate their own national systems of innovation to the worldwide intellectual property regime emerging in the post-TRIPS period, with a view to maximizing global economic welfare in the foreseeable future