Conflict Resolution, Public Goods, and Patent Thickets
研究发现，当许多企业能从专利无效中获益或陷入专利丛林时，向专利局提出授权后有效性挑战的动机减弱，表明这种纠错机制在相关技术领域可能失效。
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. This paper was accepted by Lee Fleming, entrepreneurship and innovation.