We analyze the duration of the patent examination process at the European Patent Office (EPO). Our data contain … information related to the patent's economic and technical relevance, EPO capacity and workload as well as novel citation measures … the patent grant by the examiner or an actual patent grant. Highly cited applications are approved faster by the EPO than …

We investigate incidence and evolution of patent thickets. Our empirical analysis is based on a theoretical model of … patenting in complex and discrete technologies. The model captures how competition for patent portfolios and complementarity of … patent thickets is introduced. European patent citations are used to construct measures of fragmentation and technological …

invention (through patents) and the clinical trials data submitted for market approval (through data exclusivity). Patent … market exclusivity on the likelihood of drug commercialization. The effect is largely driven by patent invalidations early in …

There has been a wide-spread misconception based on the imprecise wording of Art. 52 of the European Patent Convention … framework set by patent laws with respect to the patentability of business methods, contrasting the situation in lege in Europe … Europe. In the empirical part of the paper, 1,901 European patent applications relating to business methods are identified …

We investigate incidence and evolution of patent thickets. Our empirical analysis is based on a theoretical model of … patenting in complex and discrete technologies. The model captures how competition for patent portfolios and complementarity of … patent thickets is introduced. European patent citations are used to construct measures of fragmentation and technological …