Cambridge to Clamp Patent Rights

International Patent Harmonization and Trade Balance of Patent Rights

The economic implications of international patent harmonization have attracted little empirical scrutiny. Based on patent application and renewal data in major European countries since the early 1980s, this paper examines the empirical relationship between international patenting, R&D, and “trade flows” of patent rights across national borders. The analysis reveals a substantial patent “trade i...

Do Patent Challenge Rights Lead to Placeholder Lawsuits?

One of the more curious features of patent law is that patents can be challenged by anyone affected by them, at any time. This challenge right allows potential defendants to file a declaratory relief lawsuit in their local federal district court, seeking a judgment that a patent is invalid or noninfringed. To avoid this home-court advantage, patent owners may file a patent infringement lawsuit ...

The Use and Value of Patent Rights

Are patent pools a way to help patent owners enforce their rights ? 1

This paper explores empirically the interplay between patent pooling and litigations using data on 1,564 United States patents belonging to eight different pools and to a control database with patents having the same characteristics. We investigate two main questions. We first assess whether the entry in a pool fosters the patents’ enforcement. Our analysis makes it possible to highlight variou...

Patent Pools: Intellectual Property Rights and Competition

Patent pools do not correct all problems associated with patent thickets. In this respect, patent pools might not stop the outsider problem from striking pools. Moreover, patent pools can be expensive to negotiate, can exclude patent holders with smaller numbers of patents or enable a group of major players to form a cartel that excludes new competitors. For all the above reasons, patent pools ...