EU Patent would be Good for Patent Offices (except German PTO) and Applicants but bad for Attorneys

According to this posting, published on VoxEU.org, a policy portal set up by the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), the autors Jérôme Danguy and Bruno van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie found that "the EU patent would drastically reduce patenting costs for applicants and generate more income for both the European Patent Office as well as most national offices, all the while saving €120 million in legal fees" (see Danguy and van Pottelsberghe 2009). Below, the outcome of the study is briefly sketched with regarding to the issues "income generated by the EU patent", "increase of income for (most) national patent offices", and "decrese of costs for applicants", whereas the study relied on interesting findings of earlier studies: With the creation of an EU patent and a centralised litigation system, at least €120 million would be lost by patent lawyers (no more parallel litigations), and hence spared by the business sector (see Harhoff 2009). The implementation of the EU patent would not only reduce costs but would also improve the attractiveness and effectiveness of the system (see van Pottelsberghe 2009, Meyer and van Pottelsberghe 2009). 1. Income generated by the EU patent. The total revenue generated by a patent depends on renewal fees and maintenance rates, whereas the latter, as a key parameter for calculating a patent's revenue, depends on many other factors (see Cornelli and Schankerman 1999, Harhoff et al. 2009). The maintenance rate is the higher, (i.) the hight a countrie's GDP, (ii.) the younger a patent, (iii.) the stronger the patent system, and (iv.) the lower the renewal fees, whereas the renewal fees schedule is a key policy leverage in practice and more than a simple way to cover the operating costs of patent offices. Based on simulated maintenance rates and different fees schedules for the EU patent, the authors were able to calculate the renewal fees’ income that would be generated by an average post-grant EU patent over its life time. Whereas the actual fees income generated by an average current EP patent granted by the EPO is a bit more that €11,000, the total renewal fees’ income generated by an average EU patent would vary with the level of fees from nearly €13,600 up to €16,600. Consequently, the EU patent would generate at least the same amount of fees’ income as the EP patent, but probably substantially more, thanks to higher fees and higher maintenance rates. 2. Increase of income for (most) national patent offices. The extent the EU patent would actually affect each national patent office’s (NPOs) income obviously depends on the adopted distribution key between offices. Among the existing proposals for distribution keys, the (i.) “council proposal” weighting scheme reflects the outcome of political negotiations and is quite complex, the (ii.) population weighting scheme would reward large countries but not their innovation or economic performances, while (iii.) GDP or (iv.) R&D weighting schem…