IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/3645.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Determinants of Opposition Against EPO Patent Grants - The Case of Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals

Author

Listed:
  • Harhoff, Dietmar
  • Reitzig, Markus

Abstract

We analyse the determinants of opposition to biotechnology and pharmaceutical patents granted by the European Patent Office between 1978?96. Opposition can be considered an early form of patent validity challenge suit. In our sample, 8.6% of the patents are attacked in opposition proceedings. Using citation and patent family indicators we show that valuable patents are more likely to be attacked, and that opposition is particularly frequent in areas with strong cumulative patent numbers and with high technical or market uncertainty. We comment on the implications of these results for the design of the patent and litigation system

Suggested Citation

  • Harhoff, Dietmar & Reitzig, Markus, 2002. "Determinants of Opposition Against EPO Patent Grants - The Case of Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals," CEPR Discussion Papers 3645, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:3645
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP3645
    Download Restriction: 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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lanjouw, Jean O & Schankerman, Mark, 2001. "Characteristics of Patent Litigation: A Window on Competition," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(1), pages 129-151, Spring.
    2. Waldfogel, Joel, 1998. "Reconciling Asymmetric Information and Divergent Expectations Theories of Litigation," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(2), pages 451-476, October.
    3. Manuel Trajtenberg, 1990. "A Penny for Your Quotes: Patent Citations and the Value of Innovations," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(1), pages 172-187, Spring.
    4. repec:fth:harver:1473 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Jean Lanjouw & Josh Lerner, 1998. "The Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights: A Survey of the Empirical Literature," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 49-50, pages 223-246.
    6. Suzanne Scotchmer, 1996. "Protecting Early Innovators: Should Second-Generation Products Be Patentable?," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 27(2), pages 322-331, Summer.
    7. George L. Priest & Benjamin Klein, 1984. "The Selection of Disputes for Litigation," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(1), pages 1-56, January.
    8. Dietmar Harhoff & Francis Narin & F. M. Scherer & Katrin Vopel, 1999. "Citation Frequency And The Value Of Patented Inventions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(3), pages 511-515, August.
    9. I.P.L. P'ng, 1983. "Strategic Behavior in Suit, Settlement, and Trial," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(2), pages 539-550, Autumn.
    10. Harhoff, Dietmar & Scherer, Frederic M. & Vopel, Katrin, 2003. "Citations, family size, opposition and the value of patent rights," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(8), pages 1343-1363, September.
    11. Richard C. Levin & Alvin K. Klevorick & Richard R. Nelson & Sidney G. Winter, 1987. "Appropriating the Returns from Industrial Research and Development," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 18(3, Specia), pages 783-832.
    12. Narin, Francis & Hamilton, Kimberly S. & Olivastro, Dominic, 1997. "The increasing linkage between U.S. technology and public science," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 317-330, October.
    13. Bernhardt, Irwin & Jung, Bong S, 1979. "The Interpretation of Least Squares Regression with Interaction or Polynomial Terms," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 61(3), pages 481-483, August.
    14. Zvi Griliches, 1998. "Patent Statistics as Economic Indicators: A Survey," NBER Chapters, in: R&D and Productivity: The Econometric Evidence, pages 287-343, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Wesley M. Cohen & Richard R. Nelson & John P. Walsh, 2000. "Protecting Their Intellectual Assets: Appropriability Conditions and Why U.S. Manufacturing Firms Patent (or Not)," NBER Working Papers 7552, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Harhoff, Dietmar & Reitzig, Markus, 2004. "Determinants of opposition against EPO patent grants--the case of biotechnology and pharmaceuticals," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 443-480, April.
    17. Hall, Bronwyn H & Ziedonis, Rosemarie Ham, 2001. "The Patent Paradox Revisited: An Empirical Study of Patenting in the U.S. Semiconductor Industry, 1979-1995," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(1), pages 101-128, Spring.
    18. repec:adr:anecst:y:1998:i:49-50:p:08 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Joshua Lerner, 1994. "The Importance of Patent Scope: An Empirical Analysis," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(2), pages 319-333, Summer.
    20. Lucian Arye Bebchuk, 1984. "Litigation and Settlement under Imperfect Information," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(3), pages 404-415, Autumn.
    21. Jean Olson Lanjouw, 1998. "Patent Protection in the Shadow of Infringement: Simulation Estimations of Patent Value," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 65(4), pages 671-710.
    22. Suzanne Scotchmer, 1991. "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Cumulative Research and the Patent Law," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 29-41, Winter.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dirk Czarnitzki & Katrin Hussinger & Cédric Schneider, 2009. "Why Challenge the Ivory Tower? New Evidence on the Basicness of Academic Patents," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(4), pages 488-499, November.
    2. Dietmar Harhoff & Georg von Graevenitz & Stefan Wagner, 2016. "Conflict Resolution, Public Goods, and Patent Thickets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(3), pages 704-721, March.
    3. Nicolas van Zeebroeck & Bruno van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, 2011. "Filing strategies and patent value," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(6), pages 539-561, February.
    4. Mark A. Lemley & Carl Shapiro, 2005. "Probabilistic Patents," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(2), pages 75-98, Spring.
    5. Rahul RK Kapoor & Nicolas van Zeebroeck, 2016. "The laws of action and reaction: on determinants of patent disputes in European chemical and drug industries," Working Papers TIMES² WP 2016-019, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    6. Giuri, Paola & Mariani, Myriam, 2007. "Inventors and invention processes in Europe: Results from the PatVal-EU survey," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(8), pages 1105-1106, October.
    7. Federico Munari & Maurizio Sobrero, 2011. "Economic and Management Perspectives on the Value of Patents," Chapters, in: Federico Munari & Raffaele Oriani (ed.), The Economic Valuation of Patents, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Hsin-Ning Su & Carey Ming-Li Chen & Pei-Chun Lee, 2012. "Patent litigation precaution method: analyzing characteristics of US litigated and non-litigated patents from 1976 to 2010," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(1), pages 181-195, July.
    9. Nagaoka, Sadao & Motohashi, Kazuyuki & Goto, Akira, 2010. "Patent Statistics as an Innovation Indicator," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1083-1127, Elsevier.
    10. Schankerman, Mark & Lanjouw, Jean, 2001. "Enforcing Intellectual Property Rights," CEPR Discussion Papers 3093, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Fischer, Timo & Henkel, Joachim, 2012. "Patent trolls on markets for technology – An empirical analysis of NPEs’ patent acquisitions," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(9), pages 1519-1533.
    12. Jean O. Lanjouw & Mark Schankerman, 1997. "Stylized Facts of Patent Litigation: Value, Scope and Ownership," NBER Working Papers 6297, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Antonio Messeni Petruzzelli & Daniele Rotolo & Vito Albino, 2014. "Determinants of Patent Citations in Biotechnology: An Analysis of Patent Influence Across the Industrial and Organizational Boundaries," SPRU Working Paper Series 2014-05, SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School.
    14. Antoine Dechezleprêtre & Yann Ménière & Myra Mohnen, 2017. "International patent families: from application strategies to statistical indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(2), pages 793-828, May.
    15. Cédric Schneider, 2011. "The battle for patent rights in plant biotechnology: evidence from opposition fillings," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 36(5), pages 565-579, October.
    16. Kimberlee Weatherall & Elizabeth Webster, 2014. "Patent Enforcement: A Review Of The Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 312-343, April.
    17. Reitzig, Markus, 2004. "Improving patent valuations for management purposes--validating new indicators by analyzing application rationales," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(6-7), pages 939-957, September.
    18. Philipp N. Baecker, 2007. "Real Options and Intellectual Property," Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, Springer, number 978-3-540-48264-2, July.
    19. Wagner, Stefan & Wakeman, Simon, 2016. "What do patent-based measures tell us about product commercialization? Evidence from the pharmaceutical industry," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(5), pages 1091-1102.
    20. Bronwyn H. Hall, 2010. "The Financing of Innovative Firms," Review of Economics and Institutions, Università di Perugia, vol. 1(1).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Patents; Litigation; Intellectual property rights; European patent office;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process
    • L00 - Industrial Organization - - General - - - General
    • L20 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:3645. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.