Fabian Gaessler

Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law | IP

We study the blocking effect of patents on follow-on innovation by others. We posit that follow-on innovation requires freedom to operate (FTO), which firms typically obtain through a license from the patentee holding the original innovation. Where licensing fails, follow-on innovation is blocked unless firms gain FTO through patent invalidation. U...

A “patent box” is a term for the application of a lower corporate tax rate to the income derived from the ownership of patents. This tax subsidy instrument has been introduced in a number of countries since 2000. Using comprehensive data on patents filed at the European Patent Office, including information on ownership transfers pre- and post-grant...

Despite decades of research, the relationship between the quality of science and the value of inventions has remained unclear. We present the result of a large-scale matching exercise between 4.8 million patent families and 43 million publication records. We find a strong positive relationship between the quality of the scientific contributions ref...

Despite decades of research, the relationship between the quality of science and the value of inventions has remained unclear. We present the result of a large-scale matching exercise between the universes of 4.8 million patent families and 43 million publication records. We find a strong positive relationship between quality of scientific contribu...

We compare patent litigation cases across four European jurisdictions—Germany, the UK (England and Wales), France, The Netherlands—using case-level data gathered from cases filed in the four jurisdictions during the period 2000–2008. Overall, we find substantial differences across jurisdictions in terms of caseloads—notably, courts in Germany hear...

Patent Assertion Entities (commonly known as 'patent trolls') hurt competition and innovation. This book, the first to analyze the most salient issues related to Patent Assertion Entities around the world, integrates economic theory with economic and legal reality to examine how the entities function and their impact on competition. It also offers...

In bifurcated patent litigation systems, claims of infringement and validity of a patent are decided independently of each other in separate court proceedings at different courts. In non-bifurcated systems, infringement and validity are decided jointly in the same proceedings at a single court. We build a model that shows the key trade-off between...

To ensure local accessibility to justice, most judicial systems are characterized by the coexistence of multiple geographically dispersed entry courts. If a dispute fulfills the requirements for territorial jurisdiction at more than one of these courts, the plaintiff gains the option to conduct forum shopping; that is, to freely select the court of...

One fundamental characteristic of patents is transferability. While the rights to exclude others from making, using, or selling the protected technology originate with the inventor, they can be transferred to anyone who gains ownership of the patent. As tradable property rights, patents facilitate technology transfer and promote the vertical and ho...

Patents are probabilistic property rights: there exists inherent uncertainty regarding a patent’s validity and scope (Lemley and Shapiro, 2005). Although patents are granted by patent offices only after substantive examination, there is no guarantee that a granted patent is in fact valid. This uncertainty about patent validity has important effects...

Applying novel datasets, Fabian Gäßler analyzes how key aspects of the current patent system in Europe and Germany, respectively, affect patent enforcement and patent trade. In particular, he shows what factors determine court selection in patent litigation and how the jurisdictional separation of validity and infringement questions favors the pate...

In bifurcated patent litigation systems, claims of infringement and validity of a patent are decided independently of each other in separate court proceedings at different courts. In non-bifurcated systems, infringement and validity are decided jointly in the same proceedings at a single court. We build a model that shows the key trade-off between...

We compare patent litigation cases across four European jurisdictions—Germany, the UK (England and Wales), France, The Netherlands—using case-level data gathered from cases filed in the four jurisdictions during the period 2000–2008. Overall, we find substantial differences across jurisdictions in terms of caseloads—notably, courts in Germany hear...