Modelling the duration of patent examination at the European Patent Office

Dietmar Harhoff and Stefan Wagner

No 5283, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We analyze the duration of patent examination at the European Patent Office (EPO). Our data contain variables that are correlates of the applicants’ and examiners’ assessments of a patent’s economic and technical relevance as well as ex post-application citation measures which indicate the impact of the patent application on the state of the art. We present descriptive statistics for 30 major technology fields. In our multivariate analysis we estimate competing risk specifications in order to characterize differences in the processes leading to either a withdrawal of the application by the applicant, a refusal of the patent grant or an actual patent grant by the European Patent Office. Measuring a patent’s importance relying on the number of citations by subsequent patents we find that more important patents are approved faster by the EPO than less important patents but that applicants are more hesitant to withdraw these potentially valuable applications.

Keywords: European Patent Office; patent examination; patents; survival analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C15 C41 D73 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec and nep-ino
Date: 2005-10
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Related works:
Working Paper: Modeling the Duration of Patent Examination at the European Patent Office (2006)
Working Paper: Modeling the Duration of Patent Examination at the European Patent Office (2006)
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