Impact of Patent Co-Operation Treaty Data on Epo Patent Statistics and Improving the Timeliness of EPO Indicators

Abstract

The Patent Cooperation Treaty provides the possibility to seek patent rights in a large number of countries by filing a single international application with a single patent office. Since the mid-1980s, the patent cooperation treaty (PCT) procedure has become a popular method for filing patent applications, as is reflected in the substantial increase in PCT applications over the past 15 years.This paper analyses the impact of the PCT data on the European Patent Office (EPO) patent statistics, and explores methods to improve the timeliness of the EPO indicators by estimating the number of PCT applications which enter the EPO regional phase (see Annex A for details). This paper shows the following main impacts of PCT data in the EPO patent statistics:Including all EPO designated PCT applications data will overestimate the total number of EPO patent applications; andIt will introduce a bias in favour of non-EPC countries (countries that are not signatory ...