Economic theory views patents as policy instruments aimed at fostering innovation and diffusion. Three major implications are drawn regarding current policy debates. First, patents may not be the most effective means of protection for inventors to recover R&D investments when imitation is costly and first mover advantages are important. Second, patentability requirements, such as novelty or non-obviousness, should be sufficiently stringent to avoid the grant of patents for inventions with low social value that increase the social cost of the patent system. Third, the trade-off between the patent policy instruments of length and breadth could be used to provide sufficient incentives to develop inventions with high social value. Beyond these three implications, economic theory also pleads for a mechanism design approach: an optimal patent system could be based on a menu of different degrees of patent protection where stronger protection would involve higher fees, allowing self-selection by inventors.

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Data on patent families is used in economic and statistical studies for many purposes, including the analysis of patenting strategies of applicants, the monitoring of the globalization of inventions and the comparison of the inventive performance and stock of technological knowledge of different countries. Most of these studies take family data as given, as a sort of black box, without going into the details of their underlying methodologies and patent linkages. However, different definitions of patent families may lead to different results. One of the purposes of this paper is to compare the most commonly used definitions of patent families and identify factors causing differences in family outcomes. Another objective is to shed light into the internal structure of patent families and see how it affects patent family outcomes based on different definitions. An automated characterization of the internal structures of all extended families with earliest priorities in the 1990s, as recorded in PATSTAT, found that family counts are not affected by the choice of patent family definitions in 75% of families. However, different definitions may really matter for the 25% of families with complex structures and lead to different family compositions, which might have an impact, for instance, on econometric studies using family size as a proxy of patent value.

JT03275947 STI Working Paper SeriesThe Working Paper series of the OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry is designed to make available to a wider readership selected studies prepared by staff in the Directorate or by outside consultants working on OECD projects. The papers included in the series cover a broad range of issues, of both a technical and policy-analytical nature, in the areas of work of the DSTI. The Working Papers are generally available only in their original language -English or French -with a summary in the other.Comments on the papers are invited, and should be sent to the Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry, OECD, 2 rue André-Pascal, 75775 Paris Cedex 16, France.The opinions expressed in these papers are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the OECD or of the governments of its member countries. ABSTRACTWe investigate statistically the characteristics, functioning and incidence of pre-emptive patenting, defined as patent filings whose main effect is to hamper the grant of other patents. Patent applications can be used to prevent the grant of exclusive rights on markets and technologies to others in order to ensure freedom of operation to their holder or keep patent-less competitors out of the market. Combining data from examination outcomes and prior art at the European Patent Office (EPO), we develop a methodology to identify pre-emptive patent applications. We find evidence of pre-emption associated to patent applications cited as compromising patentability while being deemed non inventive. Furthermore, amongst them, those which are withdrawn by the applicant have the strongest pre-emptive power. The coincidence of low inventiveness and high pre-emptive impact supports the idea that some of these patents may be strategically designed by their applicants to block patenting by others. RESUMÉNous analysons statistiquement les caractéristiques, le fonctionnement et les effets des brevets préemptifs, définis comme des (demandes de) brevets dont l'effet principal est d'empêcher la délivrance d'autres brevets. Les demandes de brevets peuvent être utilisées pour empêcher la délivrance de droits exclusifs à d'autres parties sur des marchés et des technologies en vue d'assurer la liberté de manoeuvre à leur titulaire ou de maintenir des compétiteurs sans brevets à l'écart du marché. Combinant des données du résultat de l'examen et de l'art antérieur de l'Office Européen des Brevets (OEB), nous développons une méthodologie qui identifie les demandes préemptives de brevets. Nous trouvons des évidences de préemption pour des demandes de brevets citées comme compromettant la brevetabilité d'autres demandes alors qu'elles ne sont pas elles-mêmes jugés inventifs. De plus parmi elles, celles qui sont abandonnées par le demandeur lui-même ont le pouvoir préemptif le plus fort. La coïncidence de faible inventivité et de pouvoir préemptif fort suggère que certaines de ces demandes de brevets sont stratégiquement conçues par leur titulair...