ALT Please join us for a webinar on Tuesday the 17th of December 2024 at 11:00 London time i.e. 12:00 Brussels time, 13:00 Athens time. The speaker is Otto Toivanen, Department of Economics, Aalto University.. The title of the talk is "The European Unitary Patent: Patent Value, Innovation Incentives and Welfare". Abstract: The harmonization of the European patent (EP) system through the recently launched Unitary Patent (UP) is one of the largest recent changes in a major intellectual policy regime. Using a model of patent renewals and data for chemical patents granted in 2000 by the European Patent Office, we find that i) the average European patent (EP) is worth AC230K; ii) essentially all inventors would have used UP had it been available; iii) the private value of patents increases by 7% on average with the largest contributions coming from increased patent length and reduced fees and very little from improved quality of inventions and expanded territorial scope of patent protection; iv)