Conflict resolution, public goods and patent thickets

Dietmar Harhoff (), Georg von Graevenitz and Stefan Wagner

ESMT Research Working Papers from ESMT European School of Management and Technology

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: intellectual property; opposition; patent litigation; patent thickets; patents; post-grant review (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K11 K41 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2012-09-13, Revised 2013-03-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-ipr and nep-pr~
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Forthcoming in Management Science

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http://static.esmt.org/publications/workingpapers/ESMT-12-04_R1.pdf Revised version, 2013 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Conflict Resolution, Public Goods, and Patent Thickets (2016)
Working Paper: Conflict Resolution, Public Goods and Patent Thickets (2014)
Working Paper: Conflict Resolution, Public Goods and Patent Thickets (2013)
Working Paper: Conflict Resolution, Public Goods and Patent Thickets (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:esm:wpaper:esmt-12-04

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