The causal effect of including standards-related documentation into patent prior art: evidence from a recent EPO policy change

Rudi Bekkers, Arianna Martinelli and Federico Tamagni

LEM Papers Series from Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy

Abstract: This paper investigates a policy change undertaken by the European Patent Office (EPO), aimed at improving the quality of their patent granting process. This change involves the inclusion of information revealed by participants to standards-setting processes into the prior art that patent examiners consider when determining patent novelty and inventive step. Our empirical analysis finds a signicant reduction in the granting rate, yet no reduction in patent scope. We furthermore find that patent quality has declined, suggesting that the policy actually succeeded in rejecting undeserved, yet high-quality patents. Overall, the policy improved the quality of the patent granting process.

Keywords: quality of patent process; patent scope; patent quality and value; technological standards; policy evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-ipr and nep-pr~
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of including standards-related documentation in patent prior art: Evidence from an EPO policy change (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2016/11

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