Post-Issue Patent "Quality Control": A Comparative Study of US Patent Re-examinations and European Patent Oppositions

Stuart Graham, Bronwyn Hall, Dietmar Harhoff () and David C. Mowery

Department of Economics, Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley

Abstract: We report the results of the first comparative study of the determinants and effects of patent oppositions in Europe and of re-examinations on corresponding patents issued in the United States. The analysis is based on a dataset consisting of matched EPO and US patents. Our analysis focuses on two broad technology categories - biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors and computer software. Within these fields, we collect data on all EPO patents for which oppositions were filed at the EPO. We also construct a random sample of EPO patents with no opposition in these technologies. We match these EPO patents with the “equivalent” US patents covering the same invention in the United States. Using the matched sample of USPTO and EPO patents, we compare the determinants of opposition and of reexamination. Our results indicate that valuable patents are more likely to be challenged in both jurisdictions. But the rate of opposition at the EPO is more than thirty times higher than the rate of reexamination at the USPTO. Moreover, opposition leads to a revocation of the patent in about 41 percent of the cases, and to a restriction of the patent right in another 30 percent of the cases. Re-examination results in a cancellation of the patent right in only 12.2 percent of all cases. We also find that reexamination is frequently initiated by the patentholders themselves.

Keywords: patent system; litigation; intellectual property; opposition; re-examination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-08-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (50)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/8bs830w9.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Post-Issue Patent "Quality Control": A Comparative Study of US Patent Re-examinations and European Patent Oppositions (2003)
Working Paper: Post-Issue Patent “Quality Control:” A Comparative Study of US Patent Re-examinations and European Patent Oppositions (2002)
Working Paper: Post-Issue Patent "Quality Control": A Comparative Study of US Patent Re-Examinations and European Patent Oppositions (2002)
Working Paper: Post-Issue Patent “Quality Control:” A Comparative Study of US Patent Re-examinations and European Patent Oppositions (2002)
Working Paper: Post-Issue Patent "Quality Control": A Comparative Study of US Patent Re-examinations and European Patent Oppositions (2002)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:econwp:qt8bs830w9

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Department of Economics, Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().