The joint increase in the number and size of patents filed around the world puts patent systems under pressure. This paper addresses issues in measuring the voluminosity of patent applications and highlights patterns in its evolution. The results, based on a database of 2 million EPO...

Patent filings worldwide have been subject to a combined growth in terms of the number of applications filed and their size. This is putting patent systems under tremendous pressure, as witnessed by the evolution of backlogs at several patent offices. The present article presents an analysis of...

Europe is not delivering on its commitment under the Lisbon agenda to increase its R&D-to-GDP ratio to 3% by 2010. But does the European Commission's practice of benchmarking each and every member state against the headline 3% figure make sense? R&D intensity is influenced by industrial...

This paper investigates whether firms' innovation strategies affect their patenting behavior, as measured by both the probability of having a patent portfolio and the number of active patents held. Three main dimensions of an innovation strategy are taken into account: the relative importance of...