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- Title
Conflict Resolution, Public Goods, and Patent Thickets.
- Authors
Harhoff, Dietmar; von Graevenitz, Georg; Wagner, Stefan
- Abstract
Postgrant validity challenges at patent offices rely on the private initiative of third parties to correct mistakes made by patent offices. We hypothesize that incentives to bring postgrant validity challenges are reduced when many firms benefit from revocation of a patent and when firms are caught up in patent thickets. Using data on opposition to patents at the European Patent Office we show that opposition decreases in fields in which many others profit from patent revocations. Moreover, in fields with a large number of mutually blocking patents, the incidence of opposition is sharply reduced, particularly among large firms and firms that are caught up directly in patent thickets. These findings indicate that postgrant patent review may not constitute an effective correction device for erroneous patent grants in technologies affected by either patent thickets or highly dispersed patent ownership.
- Subjects
UNITED States; PATENT applications; THIRD parties (Law); PATENT offices; PATENT law; BIG business
- Publication
Management Science, 2016, Vol 62, Issue 3, p704
- ISSN
0025-1909
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1287/mnsc.2015.2152