The disciplinary effect of post-grant review: Causal evidence from European patent opposition

Arbeitspapier

We study the causal impact of invalidating marginally valid patents during post-grant opposition at the European Patent Office on affected inventors' subsequent patenting. We exploit exogenous variation in invalidation by leveraging the participation of a patent's original examiner in the opposition division as an instrument. We find a disciplinary effect of invalidation: Affected inventors file 20% fewer patent applications in the decade after the decision. This effect is entirely driven by a reduction in low-quality filings, i.e., filings that examiners associate with prior art that threatens the application's novelty or inventive step. We do not observe shifts into national patenting.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Discussion Paper ; No. 155

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives ; Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital
• Subject: Inventors ; marginal patents ; patent invalidation ; patent opposition ; postgrant review ; EPO ; innovation

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Nagler, Markus ; Sorg, Stefan
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München und Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Collaborative Research Center Transregio 190 - Rationality and Competition
• (where): München und Berlin
• (when): 2019

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/208055
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET