IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iae/iaewps/wp2005n05.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Patent Application Outcomes across the Trilateral Patent Offices

Author

Listed:
  • Paul H. Jensen

    (Centre for Microeconometrics, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, and Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia, The University of Melbourne)

  • Alfons Palangkaraya

    (Centre for Microeconometrics, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, and Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia, The University of Melbourne)

  • Elizabeth Webster

    (Centre for Microeconometrics, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, and Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia, The University of Melbourne)

Abstract

While most developed countries apply the same criteria to determine whether an invention is eligible to be protected by a patent, there are substantial procedural differences in the way in which different patent offices examine a patent application. This means that a patent application may be granted in one jurisdiction but rejected in others, which raises welfare concerns about the ability of patents to provide an ex ante incentive for investment. In this article, we analyze whether there are systematic differences in patent application outcomes across the trilateral patent offices. In order to determine how much “disharmony” exists, we examine whether the patent offices make consistent decisions for a given invention using a dataset of 70,000 patent applications that have been granted in the US and submitted in Japan and Europe and have a single, common priority application. Specifically, we model the patent application outcomes using a multinomial logit to see how the decisions made by the patent offices vary across different patent characteristics such as technology area, non-obviousness of the invention and priority country.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul H. Jensen & Alfons Palangkaraya & Elizabeth Webster, 2005. "Patent Application Outcomes across the Trilateral Patent Offices," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2005n05, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    • Handle: RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2005n05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/downloads/working_paper_series/wp2005n05.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Allison, John R. & Lemley, Mark & Moore, Kimberly A. & Trunkey, Derek, 2003. "Valuable Patents," Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series qt1m16k7w3, Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics.
    2. Iain M. Cockburn & Samuel Kortum & Scott Stern, 2002. "Are All Patent Examiners Equal? The Impact of Examiner Characteristics," NBER Working Papers 8980, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Dominique Guellec & Bruno Van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, 2002. "The Value of Patents and Patenting Strategies: Countries and Technology Areas Patterns," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 133-148.
    4. Guellec, Dominique & Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, Bruno v., 2000. "Applications, grants and the value of patent," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 109-114, October.
    5. Bronwyn H. Hall & Adam B. Jaffe & Manuel Trajtenberg, 2001. "The NBER Patent Citation Data File: Lessons, Insights and Methodological Tools," NBER Working Papers 8498, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. John Barton, 2004. "Issues Posed By A World Patent System," Journal of International Economic Law, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(2), pages 341-357, June.
    7. Harhoff, Dietmar & Reitzig, Markus, 2004. "Determinants of opposition against EPO patent grants--the case of biotechnology and pharmaceuticals," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 443-480, April.
    8. Paul H. Jensen & Elizabeth Webster, 2004. "Achieving the Optimal Power of Patent Rights," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 37(4), pages 419-426, December.
    9. Hélène Dernis & Mosahid Khan, 2004. "Triadic Patent Families Methodology," OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers 2004/2, OECD Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nicolas van Zeebroeck, 2011. "The puzzle of patent value indicators," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(1), pages 33-62.
    2. Harhoff, Dietmar & Graham, Stuart J.H., 2006. "Can Post-Grant Reviews Improve Patent System Design? A Twin Study of US and European Patents," CEPR Discussion Papers 5680, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Nicolas van Zeebroeck, 2007. "Patents only live twice: a patent survival analysis in Europe," Working Papers CEB 07-028.RS, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    4. Shobita Parthasarathy, 2011. "Whose knowledge? What values? The comparative politics of patenting life forms in the United States and Europe," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 44(3), pages 267-288, September.
    5. van Zeebroeck, Nicolas & van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, Bruno & Guellec, Dominique, 2009. "Claiming more: the Increased Voluminosity of Patent Applications and its Determinants," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 1006-1020, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nicolas van Zeebroeck, 2011. "The puzzle of patent value indicators," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(1), pages 33-62.
    2. Nicolas van Zeebroeck, 2007. "Patents only live twice: a patent survival analysis in Europe," Working Papers CEB 07-028.RS, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    3. Manuel Acosta & Daniel Coronado & Esther Ferrándiz & Manuel Jiménez, 2022. "Effects of knowledge spillovers between competitors on patent quality: what patent citations reveal about a global duopoly," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 47(5), pages 1451-1487, October.
    4. Nicolas van Zeebroeck, 2011. "Long Live Patents: the Increasing Life Expectancy of Patent Applications and its Determinants," Review of Economics and Institutions, Università di Perugia, vol. 2(3).
    5. Nicolas van Zeebroeck & Bruno van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, 2011. "Filing strategies and patent value," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(6), pages 539-561, February.
    6. Eleftherios Sapsalis & Bruno van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, 2007. "The Institutional Sources Of Knowledge And The Value Of Academic Patents," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(2), pages 139-157.
    7. Andrew Eckert & Corinne Langinier, 2014. "A Survey Of The Economics Of Patent Systems And Procedures," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 996-1015, December.
    8. Novelli, Elena, 2015. "An examination of the antecedents and implications of patent scope," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 493-507.
    9. Adam B. Jaffe & Gaétan de Rassenfosse, 2017. "Patent citation data in social science research: Overview and best practices," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 68(6), pages 1360-1374, June.
    10. Bruno Van Pottelsberghe & Eleftherios Sapsalis & Ran Navon, 2006. "Academic vs. industry patenting: an in-depth analysis of what determines patent value," Working Papers CEB 05-008.RS, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    11. Dechezlepretre, Antoine & Martin, Ralf & Mohnen, Myra, 2014. "Knowledge spillovers from clean and dirty technologies," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 60501, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    12. Christian Sternitzke, 2009. "The international preliminary examination of patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty — a proxy for patent value?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 78(2), pages 189-202, February.
    13. Antoine Dechezleprêtre & Yann Ménière & Myra Mohnen, 2017. "International patent families: from application strategies to statistical indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(2), pages 793-828, May.
    14. Yutaka Niidome, 2015. "The Factors Related to the Minimum and Maximum Survival of Patents against Challenges to Validity," GRIPS Discussion Papers 14-23, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.
    15. Kwon, Seokbeom, 2021. "The prevalence of weak patents in the United States: A new method to identify weak patents and the implications for patent policy," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    16. Kimberlee Weatherall & Elizabeth Webster, 2014. "Patent Enforcement: A Review Of The Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 312-343, April.
    17. Webster, Elizabeth & Palangkaraya, Alfons & Jensen, Paul H., 2007. "Characteristics of international patent application outcomes," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 95(3), pages 362-368, June.
    18. Yutaka Niidome, 2017. "The relation of patent description and examination with validity: an empirical study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(1), pages 159-183, April.
    19. Alfons Palangkaraya & Paul H. Jensen & Elizabeth Webster, 2005. "Determinants of International Patent Examination Outcomes," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2005n06, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    20. George Messinis, 2011. "Triadic citations, country biases and patent value: the case of pharmaceuticals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 89(3), pages 813-833, December.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2005n05. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sheri Carnegie (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mimelau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.