The imprecise wording of article 52 of the European Patent Convention lead to uncertainty with regard to the patentability of inventions related to financial methods and processes at the European Patent Office (EPO). This article summarizes the relevant legislation in Europe and contrasts it...

One area that has expanded the scope of patent subject matter concerns the patentability of a method of doing business, especially in the context of computer technology, cyber networks, or as a method of e-commerce. In recent years, the USA has taken the lead in recognising the patentability of...

We study whether and to what extent financial exchange innovations are in practice patentable in Europe. We find that exchange-related applications initially increased significantly after the State Street decision but subsequently decreased. The clear majority (65%) of applications come from the...

The intellectual property (IP) system plays an important role in the development and diffusion of technologies by determining the institutional context in which transactions occur. This article reviews the recent EPO report ‘Patents and Clean Energy Technologies: Bridging the Gap between...

Patent system in Europe has undergone significant changes during the 1970s around the establishment of the European Patent Office (EPO), and this paper tries to quantify the influence of such policy changes on the private value of European patents. Based on the patent renewal records, I estimate...

The aim of this paper is to study the determinants of the outcomes of patent applications (withdrawal, refusal or grant). The application process at the European Patent Office is modelled in three stages, using a Trivariate Probit model with double selectivity correction in order to test whether...

We investigate cross country differences in patent propensity in the European Union using the European Patent Office database and the database on European firms AMADEUS. We ask how much of the differences in patent propensity at the aggregate level can be accounted for by a more disaggregate...

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 which are derived from the EPO’s search...

We analyze the duration of patent examination at the European Patent Office (EPO). Our data contain variables that are correlates of the applicants’ and examiners’ assessments of a patent’s economic and technical relevance as well as ex post-application citation measures which indicate the...

There has been a wide-spread misconception based on the imprecise wording of Art. 52 of the European Patent Convention that the protection of business methods by patents is prohibited in Europe. This article investigates the legal framework set by patent laws with respect to the patentability of...