Claiming More: The Increased Voluminosity of Patent Applications and its Determinants

Dominique Guellec, Bruno van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie and Nicolas van Zeebroeck ()

No 5971, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: The joint increase in the number and size of patents filed around the world puts the patent system under pressure. This paper analyses the sources of this surge in number of claims and pages of patent applications at the EPO. Four hypotheses are scrutinized: the diffusion of national drafting practices, the increasing complexity of inventions, the emergence of new sectors, and new patenting strategies. The results show that the increasing voluminosity is explained by all these hypotheses and suggest that the diffusion of the US model through the PCT is one of the major factors driving the size of EPO patent applications.

Keywords: claim drafting; IP strategy; patent applications; patent systems; patent voluminosity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 O34 O50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino and nep-ipr
Date: 2006-12
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP5971.asp (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Claiming more: the increased voluminosity of patent applications and its determinants (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP5971.asp

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers
Address: Centre for Economic Policy Research, 53--56 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DG
Series data maintained by ().