Although patent assets have become increasingly valuable in recent years, companies are still facing rising patent litigation costs. Drawing on a large sample of European patents, we studied how ...companies fine-tuned the endogenous characteristics of their patents to pursue an optimal patent design. According to the study's findings, companies can adjust certain patent features to increase the value of their patents, but this increases the risk of patent infringement litigation. As a result, companies are frequently forced to choose between maximizing patent value and minimizing the risk of litigation.
•Patent assets are of strategic importance to firms.•Litigation costs due to patent infringement are high.•Optimal patent design is studied as a means to maximize patent value and minimize risks of litigations.•We perform econometric analyses on the endogenous characteristics of European patents.
We provide the first large-sample evidence on the behavior and impact of nonpracticing entities (NPEs) in the intellectual property space. We find that, on average, NPEs appear to behave as ...opportunistic “patent trolls.” NPEs sue cash-rich firms and target cash in business segments unrelated to alleged infringement at essentially the same frequency as they target cash in segments related to alleged infringement. By contrast, cash is neither a key driver of intellectual property lawsuits by practicing entities (e.g., IBM and Intel) nor of any other type of litigation against firms. We find further suggestive evidence of NPE opportunism: targeting of firms that have reduced ability to defend themselves, repeated assertions of lower-quality patents, increased assertion activity nearing patent expiration, and forum shopping. We find, moreover, that NPE litigation has a real negative impact on innovation at targeted firms: firms substantially reduce their innovative activity after settling with NPEs (or losing to them in court). Meanwhile, we neither find any markers of significant NPE pass-through to end innovators, nor of a positive impact of NPEs on innovation in the industries in which they are most prevalent.
This paper was accepted by Tyler Shumway, finance.
We investigate the value creation or destruction associated with the introduction of software patents in the United States in two ways. The first looks at the cumulative abnormal returns to ...Information and Communication Technology (ICT) firms around the time of important court decisions that impacted software patents, and the second analyzes the relationship between firms’ stock market value, the sector in which they operate, and their holdings of software patents. We conclude that the market evaluated software patents as a negative development
ex ante.
Ex post, a greater number of firms in all ICT sectors invested in these patents, and these firms had slightly higher market values than those with no software patents. However, while we obtain clear evidence that the technological importance or quality of patented innovation mattered for the market value of hardware firms both before and after the legal changes, it is less clear that the marginal patent right
per se was associated with increases in market value, and there are no significant valuation effects associated with patents for pure software firms after the change.
Many believe the root cause of the patent system's dysfunction is that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO or Agency) is issuing too many invalid patents that unnecessarily drain consumer ...welfare. Concerns regarding the Agency's over granting tendencies have recently spurred the Supreme Court to take a renewed interest in substantive patent law and have driven Congress to enact the first major patent reform act in over sixty years. Policymakers, however, have been modifying the system in an effort to increase patent quality in the dark. As there exists little to no compelling empirical evidence the PTO is actually over granting patents, lawmakers are left trying to fix the patent system without even understanding the root causes of the system's shortcomings. This Article begins to rectify this deficiency, advancing the conversation along two dimensions. First, it provides a novel theoretical source for a granting bias on the part of the Agency, positing that the inability of the PTO to finally reject a patent application may create an incentive for the resource-constrained Agency to allow additional patents. Second, this Article attempts to explore, through a sophisticated natural experiment framework, whether the Agency is in fact acting on this incentive and overgranting patents. Our findings suggest that the PTO is biased toward allowing patents. Moreover, our results suggest the PTO is targeting its overgranting tendencies toward those patents it stands to benefit from the most—that is, those patent applications directed toward technologies that have historically had high repeat-filing rates, such as information, computer, and health-related technologies. Our findings provide policymakers with much-needed evidence that the PTO is indeed overgranting patents. Our results also suggest that the literature has overlooked a substantial source of Agency bias; hence, recent fixes to improve patent quality will not achieve their desired outcome of extinguishing the PTO's overgranting proclivities.
The patent system has been faced for more than ten years with an avalanche of patent filings, which puts into question its ability to fulfil its social mission of encouraging innovation and the ...diffusion of technology. This situation is due to the emergence of new technologies, the adoption of new and more aggressive IP strategies by the business sector, and progressive global harmonization of patent systems. This book aims at providing an analysis of patent systems in general, and the European patent system in particular. Through an emphasis on the historic, strategic, and legal context of patent systems the first part of the book shows how patents progressively have been designed as an incentive mechanism which allows their holder to charge a mark up over the marginal cost through restricted competition. Patents also involve the disclosure of inventions, and hence encourage the diffusion of knowledge. Over the past century patents have gradually become the currency of technology markets. The book demonstrates how the design of patent law and practice can benefit from economic analysis, regarding notably the patent subject matter (what should be patentable or not), the optimal inventive step, the scope of protection, and the duration. The second part of the book is devoted to the European patent system. Patenting procedures in Europe are complex, as national routes exist in parallel with the centralized procedure handled by the European Patent Office, triggering complex strategies by applicants in order to maximize their exclusive rights and reduce competition. The recent development of various filing strategies and their impact on the granting process are examined in the light of factual evidence. The recent explosion of the number and size of patent applications raises the issue of quality maintenance. The book puts forward issues to be addressed by patent policy in Europe: putting quality of patents first, making procedures stricter for applicants, reinforcing the integration of the system at the European level, and inscribing the economic mission of the system in the European Patent Convention so that the case law would integrate economic concerns.
The goal of this study was to describe early and midterm outcomes of extremely premature newborns (EPNs) who underwent transcatheter echocardiographically guided patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) ...closure.
Surgical ligation of PDA in EPNs confers significant risk for procedural morbidity and adverse long-term outcomes.
The Amplatzer Vascular Plug II was used in all cases. Post-ligation syndrome was defined using previously published parameters. Patients were followed at pre-specified intervals, and prospectively collected data were reviewed.
Transcatheter closure was attempted in 24 EPNs (mean procedural age 30 days range 5 to 80 days, mean procedural weight 1,249 g range 755 to 2,380 g) and was successful in 88%. The 3 procedural failures were related to the development of left pulmonary artery (LPA) stenosis caused by the device, and all devices were removed uneventfully. Complications included 2 instances of device malposition, resolved with device repositioning, and 1 instance of LPA stenosis, requiring an LPA stent. There were no procedural deaths, cases of post-ligation syndrome, residual PDA, or device embolization. Survival to discharge was 96% (23 of 24), with a single late death unrelated to the procedure. After a median follow-up period of 11.1 months, all patients were alive and well, with no residual PDA or evidence of LPA or aortic coarctation.
This newly described technique can be performed safely with a high success rate and minimal procedural morbidity in EPNs. Early and midterm follow-up is encouraging. Future efforts should be directed toward developing specific devices for this unique application.
This article used nine patent value indicators to compare the differences in the characteristics of U.S. patents for which provisional applications (PAs) were submitted and other patents without PAs ...(NPAs). The findings revealed significant differences in the average numbers of backward and forward citations, patent and nonpatent references, and patent claims, patent family size (number of patents and number of countries), and duration of examination between the two groups of patents granted between 2005 and 2017 by United States Patent and Trademark Office. Increasing trends were observed in the average number of backward citations and average percentage of patents renewed per year in both PA and NPA groups, whereas decreasing trends were observed in the average numbers of forward citations, countries, claims, and average duration of examination per patent and per year in PA and NPA groups. Differences in patent characteristics based on type and field were observed. This article also revealed more significant differences in PAs than in NPAs because of a larger number of pairs of fields. The results of this study confirmed that PAs have a stronger association with patent value and provided further justification for filing PAs, in addition to obtaining an early effective date for new inventions.
Utilizing a novel methodology based on international family-to-family patent citation data, this paper directly compares X/Y patent citations (i.e., those cited as grounds for rejections, equivalent ...to “blocking patents” in the US) between major patent offices. Remarkable discrepancies between the offices were revealed, despite the common patentability criteria of novelty and inventive step to generate citations. This paper then introduces a simple cosine similarity measurement between a family of X/Y patent citations and all citations added globally to the same original application. How the discrepancies of X/Y patent citations at the European Patent Office (EPO) and the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) relate to the characteristics of applications and longitudinal aspects of office actions were also examined. X/Y patent citations from both the EPO and USPTO commonly show that the range of patent application classes is positively correlated with divergent reasons for refusal, suggesting that costly examinations lead to diversified X/Y patent citations. One novel methodological feature of this paper is that examiner citations across jurisdictions are comparable if we employ family-to-family citations and common criteria for the X/Y citation category. Furthermore, unlike the normal citation-generating process where a citing document adds citations to prior art only once, this paper represents the first attempt to analyze a citation network with multiple citing opportunities from separate parties. We find that the variance of citation linkages has a negative relationship with the ease in which different citers evaluate prior art in the same way, thereby providing a new perspective on the notion of breadth in citation impact.
The B-cell lymphoma 2 (BCL-2) protein is the most extensively studied anti-apoptotic member within the BCL-2 protein family. It functions to inhibit programmed cell death by forming a heterodimer ...with BAX, thereby promoting cellular survival through the extension of tumor cell lifespan and facilitating malignant transformation. This Patent Highlight reveals the development of small molecule degraders that consist of a ligand targeting the protein of interest, BCL-2, an E3 ubiquitin ligase recruitment ligand (such as Cereblon or Von Hippel–Lindau ligands), and a chemical linker that connects the two ligands. The proteolysis-targeting chimera (PROTAC)-mediated heterodimerization of the bound proteins leads to the ubiquitination of the target protein, which is subsequently degraded by the proteasome. This strategy offers innovative therapeutic options for cancer, immunology, and autoimmune disease management.
Provided herein are novel quinoline compounds as KRAS inhibitors, pharmaceutical compositions, use of such compounds in treating cancer and processes for preparing such compounds.
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