how the patent system is shaping the future in the data-driven economy

Mertens Armin; Scheufen Marc

Armin Mertens / Marc Scheufen in European Journal of Law and Economics External Publication 29. May 2024 Intellectual property and fourth industrial revolution technologies: how the patent system is shaping the future in the data-driven economy

Using the classification system from the European Patent Office (EPO), we identify almost 600,000 patent applications for fourth industrial revolution technologies from 1986 to 2015.

External Publication

how the patent system is shaping the future in the data-driven economy

Armin Mertens / Marc Scheufen in European Journal of Law and Economics External Publication 29. May 2024

Intellectual property and fourth industrial revolution technologies: how the patent system is shaping the future in the data-driven economy

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Using the classification system from the European Patent Office (EPO), we identify almost 600,000 patent applications for fourth industrial revolution technologies from 1986 to 2015.

Contacts

We contribute to the economic literature by seeking to answer two research questions: (1) What is the effect of legal breath (and other indicators) on the quality of innovations in the fourth industrial revolution, (2) How does the IP culture (utilitarism vs. natural law) explain these differences? We find that the legal breadth of a patent positively affects the quality of innovations in the fourth industrial revolution. Interestingly, this impact of legal breadth may be driven by historical path dependencies and ways in which the two philosophical schools (utilitarism vs. natural law) have shaped the patent system in Anglo-Saxon countries versus continental Europe.

External Publication

how the patent system is shaping the future in the data-driven economy

Armin Mertens / Marc Scheufen in European Journal of Law and Economics External Publication 29. May 2024

Intellectual property and fourth industrial revolution technologies: how the patent system is shaping the future in the data-driven economy

to Download

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Digitization

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Almost one third of all employees in Germany have had at least one new artificial intelligence (AI) application introduced at their workplace since 2022. AI is most commonly used for automatic data processing and text recognition.

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