With the development of society, we get into situations where it is also necessary to protect what cannot be touched. We begin to get into a situation where we protect what cannot be reached, which is intangible rights. If we look into the past, the first kind of intangible right could be God's blessing as we can learn about it in the Bible. Many years later, the issue of electric current is solved, where the electric current is only taken as an accessory to the main thing, the metal wire, which is the electric conductor. In today's world, however, electricity is a separate thing, but it cannot be touched, touched even though it is all around us and it is a universally transformable source of energy. The same issue arises in the area of protection of rights arising from intellectual activity and implemented also in intangible form. The protection of intangible law and its one particular part - patent (patent protection) is the main interest of this work. Intangible rights are protected by individual states around the world when interactions between owners or violators of individual rights around the world occur very often. The dissertation on Patent Litigation with an International Element deals with that part of the interaction between the proprietors and infringers of patent-protected rights,...

I begin chapter I with an examination of the effect of broadband on quantitative and qualitative aspects of research. This paper investigates whether access to the Internet is positively correlated with journal articles. I employ data sets from the world bank for 190 countries from 2000 to 2018 and run two types of regressions: Poisson and Negative Binomial. Our results indicate that broadband facilitates to write more journal articles and get more citations. My second chapter concerns access to broadband, fixed telephone, and mobile cellular is expected to have a positive impact on innovations. This paper investigates whether or not access to the Internet and telephone is positively correlated with innovation. We employ data sets from the world bank for 190 countries from 2000 to 2018 and run two types of regressions: OLS and fixed effect. Within each method, we examine how the income-level of the countries affects the answer. Our results indicate that broadband, telephone, and mobile cellular facilitates innovation. We explore two possible explanations for this: i) there are increasing marginal benefits of broadband deployment, ii) broadband creates a positive externality that indirectly enhances innovation. The conclusion is robust to various income level countries. In the third chapter, I examine how a connection to the internet and telephone affect labor market outcomes. We employ datasets from the world bank for 190 countries from 2000 to 2018 and employ three types of regressions: OLS, fixed effect estimator, and non-linear model. Within each method, we examine how the income status, gender, education level affects the answer.

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No / In this paper we report on a composite index of international patent systems strength for 48 developing and industrialized countries annually from 1998 to 2011. Building upon earlier indices we develop a conceptual framework informed by transaction cost theory and derive measures which emphasize the importance of enforcement-related aspects of the patent system of countries. Findings reveal harmonization of the regulative aspects of patent protection internationally in the post-TRIPs era but not of overall national patent systems. The index should inform studies on the relationship between national patent systems and a range of international business and other phenomena. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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The reach of the patent system has substantially broadened in recent decades. Subject matter extensions were not introduced by parliaments, but by individual judges considering specific cases, often between private parties. The focus in this thesis is whether these changes create a net economic benefit to society. Because of the lack of data on patents, it is not possible to address this question directly. The thesis therefore focuses on a critical aspect of patents: their inventiveness.¶ The main contribution of this thesis is a detailed empirical assessment of the inventiveness of patents. This assessment breaks new ground by using the actual claims in the patent specification as the basis for a qualitative assessment against the yardstick of whether there is any new contribution to knowledge. This yardstick is used because a key social benefit from private invention is the spillovers from new knowledge. In addition a low inventive threshold encourages monopoly grants for inventions that would have occurred absent patents, and thus increases social costs without any offsetting benefits.¶ A small universe of 72 recently granted Australian business method patents is assessed on this basis. Of these, one possibly contributes new knowledge, and three others possibly contribute new ideas, but without any associated new knowledge. It is hard to find any contribution in the rest of the dataset. The data suggest that the large majority of currently granted patents produce no benefit to society, and do not meet the normal definition of the concept of “invention”.¶ The detailed analysis shows the underlying problems to include identifying previous knowledge, an issue already suggested by the literature, but more extensively documented here. The legal judgement rules developed through case law are shown to be very poor yardsticks for implementation of an important economic policy. The narrow legal doctrines result in, for example, the computerisation of well-known methods being judged both novel and inventive. They also allow obvious combinations of old ideas, and trivial variations on old ideas to be granted patent monopolies. Despite the analogous use doctrine, patents are granted for the application of known methods to new areas for which they are well suited.¶ A number of proposals are put forward for reform of patent policy. The underlying theme is that there should be a good chance, and clear evidence, that the patent system enhances national economic well-being. Specific proposals include writing the objective of patent policy into the statute so that judges have clear guidance in their decision-making, limiting the grant of patents to science and technology based inventions, requiring the patent applicant to demonstrate novelty and inventiveness beyond reasonable doubt, setting the inventiveness standard in the context of a balance between benefits and costs, and introducing a defence of independent invention.¶ As the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) mandates no discrimination under patent law between fields of technology, the results of this investigation may be generalisable to other technology fields. They may also be generalisable to the inventiveness standards in other jurisdictions: of the 72 Australian patents, 32 have already received at least one overseas grant (18 if New Zealand is excluded).

Examensarbetet har genomförts i samarbete med innovationsföretaget ProboNova Medical Innovations AB. ProboNova jobbar främst med konceptframtagning av medicintekniska produkter. ProboNova tar sedan en Provisional Patent Application på konceptet och licenserar ut det till ett större företag. Genom att licensera ut koncepten slipper de kostnaderna för kliniska tester bland annat.  Examensarbetet grundades i att ProboNova ville ha hjälp med att ta fram ett koncept på en ny sårhake. Projektet har genomsyrats av designprocessen där förstudie och idégenerering har varit de två dominerande delarna. I slutet av projektet presenterades ett koncept som uppfyllde alla krav och detta koncept togs det senare en Provisional Patent Application på.  Tanken är att examensarbetet ska ge läsaren en bättre förståelse för hur man kan jobba med designprocessen och lära sig fördelarna med att välja en Provisional Patent Application istället för en Nonprovisional ansökan. / The thesis was carried out in cooperation with the company ProboNova Medical Innovation AB. ProboNova works mainly with the concept development of medical devices. Then they take a Provisional Patent Application on the concept and licensing it out to a larger company. By licensing out the concepts they don’t have to take the costs of clinical trials for example.   The thesis was founded in that ProboNova wanted help with developing a concept on a new surgical retractor. The project has been characterized by the design process in which the feasibility studies and brainstorming has been the main parts. At the end of the project a concept was presented. The final concept met all the requirements from ProboNova and from the functional analysis that was done in the feasibility studies. A Provisional Patent Application was taken later on the final concept.    The idea is that the thesis should give the reader a better understanding of how to work with the design process, and learn the benefits of choosing a Provisional Patent Application instead of a Nonprovisional application.

The present Master thesis was written during an internship at Deutsche Post DHL Solutions& Innovations, a subsidiary of Deutsche Post DHL. The main purpose was to make a patent portfolio benchmark for the previously identified business competitors of the DPDHL group. The research questions aimed to find out how relevant the patent portfolio analysis is for comparing competitors and whether or not the results can be matched with other types of rankings. The benchmark was made using the PatentSight software tool. PatentSight allows the patent portfolio analysis of individual companies as well as groups of companies (competitors). The software tool is based on a new approach to benchmark patent portfolios called Patent Asset Index. This approach uses several indicators to measure the patent portfolios strengths. The indicators are based on relatively widely used measures of patent analysis such as the number of citations that a patent has received. However, these measures are further adjusted by the PatentSight indicators in order to prevent false results due to the difference in patents’ ages, for instance. The results of the patent portfolio benchmark and their comparison with other rankings have confirmed previous research findings that the patent portfolio analysis is a useful tool which can remove uncertainties and provide new perspectives but cannot be used as single indicator of the competitors’ strength.

För att en uppfinning ska anses vara patenterbar uppställer artikel 52(1) EPC fyra rekvisit. Det ska vara en uppfinning som är ny, har uppfinningshöjd och är industriellt tillämpbar. Uppfinningsrekvisitet finns inte definierat i EPC utan har utvecklats genom praxis. För att en uppfinning ska anses vara en patenterbar uppfinning ska den ha teknisk karaktär. Vad som utgör teknisk karaktär har även det utvecklats genom praxis. En patenterbar uppfinning ska avse den tekniska ämnessfären. Detta kommer till uttryck i artikel 52(2) EPC som genom en inte uttömmande lista definierar vad som inte ska anses vara en uppfinning. Det framgår av artikel 52(2)(c) och (3) EPC att datorprogram ”som sådana” inte är patenterbara uppfinningar. Trots det kan vissa datorprogramrelaterade uppfinningar patenteras. Syftet med denna uppsats är att redogöra för EPO:s utveckling av patent på datorprogram och mer specifikt hur kravet på teknisk karaktär har förändrats för att avgöra om uppfinningsrekvisitet i artikel 52(1) EPC är uppfyllt. Bedömningen av teknisk karaktär för bedömningen av uppfinningsrekvisitet i artikel 52(2) EPC har utvecklats från en bedömning av det tekniska bidraget i VICOM-målet till att bedöma ytterligare teknisk effekt, tekniska medel och fysiska ting i IBM-målet, Pension Benefit-målet och Hitachi-målet. Denna utveckling har inte medfört någon minskning av kravet på teknisk karaktär, utan har gjort uppfinningsbegreppet bredare med anledning av den utveckling som skett på området och på så vis anses flera uppfinningar ha teknisk karaktär. Effekten av utvecklingen i praxis är att det anses viktigare att bedöma kravet på uppfinningshöjd. Kravet på uppfinningshöjd är speciellt viktigt inom tekniska områden med en snabb utveckling eftersom det annars finns en stor risk att utvecklingen blockeras. / For an invention to patentable, article 52(1) EPC require four criteria to be fulfilled. It should be an invention, that is new, involve an inventive step and is susceptible of industrial application. The criteria of invention is not defined in the EPC, but has been developed through case law. An invention need to have technical character for it to be patentable. What constitutes technical character has also been defined through case law. A patentable invention should be in the field of technology. This is expressed in article 52(2) EPC which defines what should not be seen as an invention. Article 52(2)(c) and (3) EPC states that a program for computers as such is not a patentable invention. The purpose with this thesis is to analyze the EPO case law on programs for computers and more specifically how the concept of technical character has changed. The assessment of technical character required for a patentable invention has developed from assessing the technical contribution in VICOM to assessing further technical effect, technical means and physical products in IBM, Pension Benefit Systems and Hitachi. The development has not meant any decrease in assessing technical character, but instead made the criteria of invention broader because of the development in the field of computer programs. The effect of the case law development has meant a shift from assessing invention to assessing inventive step. The criterion for inventive step is especially important in fields where technical development moves rapidly, otherwise there is a risk of blocking development.