International patent disputes: Evidence from oppositions at the European Patent Office

Abstract

The impact of the geographical origin of patents on the probability of an opposition being filed and a patent being revoked has been examined in this paper, after accounting for patent value indicators and industry specificities. The study is based on a dataset of approximately 450,000 EPO granted patents and 24,000 patent opposition cases in the years 2000–2008. We find that patents with a first priority in the US are less likely to be challenged, although they are relatively more likely to be revoked than patents with a priority in a member country of the European Patent Convention. Patents from Japan have less probability of being opposed and are less likely to be revoked than the other countries. A disaggregation of the European countries has revealed that patents with a German priority have a higher or similar likelihood of being opposed than patents from the other countries, with the exceptions of The Netherlands and Denmark.