Exploring the Opaqueness of the Patent System - Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Dietmar Harhoff () and Sebastian Stoll

Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems from Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich

Abstract: One of the objectives of patent systems is to disclose information which other agents can build on in further inventions and in their decision-making. While some observers take it as given that real-world patent systems serve this objective, we argue in this article that patent systems are highly opaque and likely to be of limited value as a source of information. We use data from a natural experiment to explore this issue. Requests for accelerated examination used to be publicly observable at the European Patent Office (EPO). Starting in December 2001, the EPO started to treat these requests as confidential information. Using data on acceleration requests which were historically known only to the applicant and the EPO, and later provided to us, we test whether the change in the information regime impacted the actions of applicants and their rivals. We develop a theoretical model of acceleration requests and patent opposition to identify the extent to which the patent system is opaque. We confirm empirically that opposition and acceleration rates of high-value patents change significantly in most technological areas once acceleration requests become unobservable. We interpret these results as evidence that the system is highly opaque in many fields.

Keywords: patent value; opaqueness; accelerated examination; patent opposition; European Patent Office (EPO) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K40 L00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-law
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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