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Patent Costs and Impact on Innovation Patent costs and impact on innovation International comparison and analysis of the impact on the exploitation of R&D results by SMEs, Universities and Public Research Organisations EUROPEAN COMMISSION Directorate-General for Research and Innovation Directorate A — Policy Development and Coordination Unit A4— Analysis and monitoring of national research policies Contact: Richard Deiss E-mail: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] European Commission B-1049 Brussels EUROPEAN COMMISSION Patent costs and impact on innovation International comparison and analysis of the impact on the exploitation of R&D results by SMEs, Universities and Public Research Organisations December 2014 This study was financed under FP7 (Capacities Work Programme: Support for the Coherent Development of Research Policies, tender SI2.624064). Carried out by Everis Spain S.L.U. – Madrid For the Directorate-General for Research & Innovation Directorate-General for Research and Innovation Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) EUROPE DIRECT is a service to help you find answers to your questions about the European Union Freephone number (*): 00 800 6 7 8 9 10 11 (*) The information given is free, as are most calls (though some operators, phone boxes or hotels may charge you) LEGAL NOTICE This document has been prepared for the European Commission however it reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. More information on the European Union is available on the internet (http://europa.eu). Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2015. ISBN 978-92-79-45520-9 doi:10.2777/0782 © European Union, 2015. Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged. Cover images: © Lonely, # 46246900, 2011. © ag visuell #16440826, 2011. © Sean Gladwell #6018533, 2011. © LwRedStorm, #3348265. 2011. © kras99, #43746830, 2012. Source: Fotolia.com. Authors and acknowledgements The present report includes the results of the ‘Patent costs and impact on innovation study: an international comparison and analysis of the impact on the exploitation of R&D results by SMEs, Universities and Public Research Organisations’. This study has been funded by the EC and conducted by everis Spain. This report was prepared by a team of consultants and analysts from the Business Analytics and Business Intelligence units of everis Spain (www.everis.com), led by Dr. Ángel Sánchez (Project Director), Mr. Pablo Hortal (Project Manager) and Mr. David Cuesta (Chief Analyst). The project team gratefully acknowledges the valuable feedback and advice the Project Officer of the European Commission (Mr. Richard Deiss) and the members of the Steering Committee provided to everis throughout the project. 4 CONTENTS 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .................................................................................................. 8 2 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 10 2.1 Context ........................................................................................................... 10 2.2 Objectives ........................................................................................................ 11 3 METHODOLOGY OVERVIEW AND SOURCES OF INFORMATION ......................................... 12 4 RESULTS .................................................................................................................. 17 4.1 PATENT COSTS AND PROCEDURE IN NPOS .......................................................... 17 4.1.1 Patent costs: a cross-country comparison ................................................... 17 4.1.2 Country clustering .................................................................................... 30 4.1.3 Patent costs: policies to promote innovation for SMEs ................................... 31 4.1.4 Workload in NPOs: cross-country comparison .............................................. 34 4.2 Profile of patents filed in NPOs and the EPO ......................................................... 40 4.3 Economic indicators .......................................................................................... 51 4.3.1 Utilisation rate and economic value of patents ............................................. 51 4.3.2 Motivation for patenting ............................................................................ 53 4.3.3 Relationship between patent costs and investment in research ...................... 55 4.3.4 Impact of patent costs on a number of different aspects ............................... 58 4.4 Patenting costs investment & internationalisation impacts, barriers and burdens ......................................................................................... 71 5 DISCUSSION ............................................................................................................ 86 6 CONCLUSIONS AND OPEN QUESTIONS ........................................................................ 88 6.1 Conclusions ...................................................................................................... 88 6.2 Open questions: the basis for future work ............................................................ 90 7 ANNEXES.................................................................................................................. 92 7.1 Countries and group of countries ........................................................................ 92 7.2 IPC - Technology field concordance table ............................................................. 93 7.3 IPC - NACE concordance table ............................................................................ 96 7.4 Economic sectors .............................................................................................. 98 7.5 N° of patents by technology field and economic sector per type of applicant .......... 101 7.6 Literature review ............................................................................................ 105 5 List of figures Figure 1 - Phases of the CRISP-DM methodology process ..................................................... 14 Figure 2 – Overall patent costs EUR (2011) ......................................................................... 21 Figure 3 – Relative overall patent costs (2011) .................................................................... 24 Figure 4 – Cost reductions in overall patent costs for SMEs in EUR (2011) ............................... 32 Figure 5 - Number of filings vs Relative administrative fees (2001) ........................................ 40 Figure 6 - Weighted average patent life in years by technology field (1991) ............................ 43 Figure 7 - Weighted average patent life in years by economic sector (1991) ........................... 44 Figure 8 - Weighted average number of validated countries by technology field (2001) ............ 45 Figure 9 - Weighted average number of validated countries by economic sector (2001) ........... 46 Figure 10 - Arithmetic mean of patent lives per validated country in years (for patents filed in 1991) .................................................................................. 49 Figure 11 - Arithmetic mean of the number of patents validated in destination countries, per origin country of applicants (for patents filed in 2001) ..................................... 50 Figure 12 - Patent utilisation (commercialisation or licensing) for the 20 European countries considered in PatVal-EU II (2010) vs Relative maintenance costs (2011) ... 51 Figure 13 – Economic value of patents for the 20 European countries considered in PatVal-EU II (2010) vs Relative maintenance costs (2011) ................................. 52 Figure 14 – Motivations for patenting for the 20 European countries considered in PatVal-EU II (2010) vs Relative maintenance costs (2011) ................................. 53 Figure 15 – GERD vs Relative overall patent costs (2011) ....................................................... 56 Figure 16 – BERD vs Relative overall patent costs (2011) ....................................................... 57 Figure 17 – HERD vs Relative overall patent costs (2011) ....................................................... 58 Figure 18 - Patents filed in 1991 which have a patent life that can be calculated (with high certainty), per type of applicant for each technology field ..................... 101 Figure 19 - Patents filed in 1991 which have a patent life that can be calculated (with high certainty), per type of applicant for each economic sector ..................... 102 Figure 20 - Patents filed in 2001 that have been validated in at least one country, per type of applicant for each technology field .................................................... 103 Figure 21 - Patents filed in 2001 that have been validated in at least one country, per type of applicant for each economic sector ................................................... 104 6 List of tables Table 1 - Project tasks and associated deliverables ............................................................... 13 Table 2 - Description of PATSTAT 10-2012 data.................................................................... 16 Table 3 - Patent costs structure EUR (2011) ........................................................................ 19 Table 4 - Overall patent costs EUR (2011) ..........................................................................
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