This book provides the first comprehensive study of what cannot be patented and what should not be patentable in Europe.

This manual provides guiding principles for the use of patent data in the context of S&T measurement, and recommendations for the compilation and interpretation of patent indicators in this context.

This volume assembles papers commissioned by the National Research Council's Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP) to inform judgments about the significant institutional and policy changes in the patent system made over the past two decades. The chapters fall into three areas. The first four chapters consider the determinants and effects of changes in patent "quality." Quality refers to whether patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) meet the statutory standards of patentability, including novelty, nonobviousness, and utility. The fifth and sixth chapters consider the growth in patent litigation, which may itself be a function of changes in the quality of contested patents. The final three chapters explore controversies associated with the extension of patents into new domains of technology, including biomedicine, software, and business methods.

The U.S. patent system is in an accelerating race with human ingenuity and investments in innovation. In many respects the system has responded with admirable flexibility, but the strain of continual technological change and the greater importance ascribed to patents in a knowledge economy are exposing weaknesses including questionable patent quality, rising transaction costs, impediments to the dissemination of information through patents, and international inconsistencies. A panel including a mix of legal expertise, economists, technologists, and university and corporate officials recommends significant changes in the way the patent system operates. A Patent System for the 21st Century urges creation of a mechanism for post-grant challenges to newly issued patents, reinvigoration of the non-obviousness standard to quality for a patent, strengthening of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, simplified and less costly litigation, harmonization of the U.S., European, and Japanese examination process, and protection of some research from patent infringement liability.

The second edition of this acclaimed and widely-used book has been thoroughly updated in light of, among others, the revised Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal, which entered into force in January 2020. It provides the first detailed understanding of these new rules and their influence on opposition and appeal proceedings. Dealing with all stages of proceedings before the European Patent Office, this book provides fresh insight into how best to act at each stage to successfully complete a case in opposition and appeal, detailing how opposition divisions and boards of appeal approach the cases before them.