Plusieurs initiatives d’origines européenne et nationale ont contribué à l’émergence d’un nouveau concept en droit d’auteur : l’œuvre transformatrice. La récurrence et la persistance des débats en la matière prouvent que ce concept ne traduit pas qu’un phénomène conjoncturel. Ces raisons conduisent en conséquence à lui consacrer une étude afin de déterminer la pertinence de l’admission de ce concept en droit d’auteur. L’étude débute par le constat que certains auteurs travaillent en s’adossant volontairement à une ou plusieurs œuvres originelles créées par autrui, qu’ils intègrent à leur processus créatif, aboutissant ainsi à la création d'une œuvre nouvelle. Ces pratiques d’emprunt créatif à l’œuvre d’autrui ont désormais pris une dimension particulière. Celle-ci s’explique d’une part par le développement du numérique. D’autre part, une partie du public, soit les destinataires des œuvres, souhaite participer activement à la création et revendique le droit d’utiliser les œuvres d’autrui comme autant de moyens d’expression et de création. Le législateur a certes envisagé l’hypothèse dans laquelle une œuvre nouvelle procède d'une œuvre préexistante au travers de la catégorie légale des œuvres composites. Cependant, les dispositions éparses qui lui sont consacrées souffrent d’une terminologie et d’un régime imprécis qui n’ont jamais fait l’objet d’une étude juridique approfondie. L’émergence du concept d’œuvre transformatrice illustre l’importance théorique et pratique de remettre en cause cette catégorie légale des œuvres composites. Aussi, la délimitation du concept suppose, dans un premier temps, une nécessaire remise en cause des catégories traditionnelles qui constituent les piliers du droit d'auteur, ainsi que les impératifs auxquels la constitution de ce monopole doit répondre. Cette lecture renouvelée aboutit à circonscrire la notion fonctionnelle d’œuvre transformatrice. Loin de se cantonner à proposer une nouvelle version de l’œuvre originelle, l’auteur de l’œuvre transformatrice exprime une opinion sur l’œuvre d’autrui, en induisant un décalage avec celle-ci. Bien souvent, il a réalisé son œuvre sans l’autorisation de l’auteur de l’œuvre originelle, et leurs droits entrent alors en conflit. Dans un second temps, l’étude s’attelle à appréhender ce conflit de droits. Le droit positif s’avère limité, de sorte qu’il faut affiner l’analyse juridique du lien unissant ces deux auteurs en l’enrichissant de la comparaison avec des mécanismes extérieurs au droit d’auteur, et d’autres issus du droit comparé. En définitive, c’est par le mécanisme de l’exception au droit d’auteur que l’on trouvera le moyen de concilier de manière pérenne les droits de l’auteur originel et ceux de l’auteur de l’œuvre transformatrice. / Transformative work is a new concept in copyright law that is emerging from several recent initiatives across Europe. The recurring debate on this concept indicates that it is not short-lived and highlights the need for a strategy to define a suitable legal framework. The purpose of this study is to assess the relevance of including the concept of transformative works in French and European Union copyright law. The starting point is authors’ integration of original works created by third parties in their creative process so as to generate new pieces of work. These practices are increasing in occurrence, with the rise of the digital age being one explanation of their prevalence. Furthermore, the public appreciates the value of these works and wishes to maintain the right to use third party works as a means of creative expression. The legislator has envisaged categorising new work inspired from pre-existing work as derivative and composite work. Nevertheless, the scarce arrangements that have been developed lack a proper framework and a detailed legal study has yet to be undertaken. The emergence of the concept of transformative work highlights the practical and theoretical need to challenge the legal definition of derivative and composite work. Far from offering a new derived version of the original piece of work, the author of a transformative work expresses an opinion on the third party work, by inserting a differentiating element. Therefore, the format of expression and content justify the legal analysis between the author of the original piece of work and the author of the transformative work. As such, framing the concept involves in the first instance, questioning the traditional pillars of copyright law and their requirements. This new understudy leads to the framing of the definition of transformative work. Secondly, this study focusses on how several copyright laws can co-exist. The content of positive law is limited and therefore, the study helps develop the concept of transformative work by comparing external mechanisms of both copyright and comparative law.In conclusion, incorporating transformative work into copyright law is based on the exception mechanism of copyright law.

This dissertation provide not only a comprehensive overview on concepts and models of innovation, but it also provide critical analysis on the intellectual property system with an emphasize on the patent system and enforcement system in Vietnam. The empirical findings have suggested that legal business types, firm's age are amongst the determinant characteristics that indicate manufacturing innovation. Furthermore, a number of factors including rewarding scheme,average employee education,collaboration, training are the factors that influence manufacturing innovation.<p>Moreover, an in depth study on the patenting cost system of the fast developing ASEAN countries and China explore the impact of FDI and the patenting cost on the growth of resident patent registration ,which is observed following the traditional demand curve. With poor infranstructure and lack of competent IP personnel, the quality of patent granted is in questionaire. Finally, this research explore in depth the enforcement systems in Vietnam, which need further reform. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Pourquoi les films de cinéma sont-ils souvent attribués à des auteurs alors même que leurs génériques énumèrent des dizaines de noms propres et de noms de métiers ? A la suite de Michel Foucault et de sa définition de la « fonction-auteur » comme forme d’appropriation des discours, cette thèse étudie la genèse et l’existence des auteurs de films au prisme des luttes de définition de leurs droits de propriété. Plutôt que de considérer les auteurs de cinéma comme ceux qui « font » les films ou comme une fiction occultant le caractère collectif de leur fabrication, elle montre que les auteurs sont les produits d’une division du travail cinématographique et des rapports de domination qui la traversent. Ce travail, inscrit dans une perspective de sociologie historique, adopte un référentiel binational centré sur la France et les Etats-Unis, où les auteurs de films ne disposent pas des mêmes droits. Il vise à objectiver les dimensions nationales, internationales et transnationales de l’appropriation des films. La période étudiée débute au moment où des personnes et des groupes ont été définis juridiquement comme des auteurs de cinéma : dès les années 1900.La première partie de ce texte est consacrée à la définition du droit de propriété des films depuis l’émergence du cinéma jusqu’à l’adoption de la loi du 11 mars 1957 et du Copyright Act de 1976. Après des décennies de débats, ces lois ont défini différemment l’identité et les droits des auteurs de films. A partir de publications juridiques, cinématographiques et parlementaires, on étudie ces lois comme les résultats d’un travail de codification structuré par des normes préexistantes et par les relations entre les acteurs qui ont participé à leur rédaction. Le développement du droit de propriété cinématographique est à la fois la cause et la conséquence de la constitution d’un espace de négociation regroupant des professionnels du droit, des hauts fonctionnaires, des professionnels de la politique et des organisations professionnelles du cinéma, dont certaines se sont constituées dans le but de défendre le statut d’auteur de leurs membres. La deuxième partie de la thèse prolonge et dépasse l’étude du droit de propriété en analysant l’appropriation des films comme une relation structurée par la division du travail cinématographique et social. Les luttes de définition de l’auteur de film qui ont débuté dans les années 1910 ont contribué à la hiérarchisation du personnel cinématographique et à la différenciation de la valeur cinématographique par rapport à d’autres formes de valeur économique et artistique. Des témoignages, autobiographies et publications cinématographiques permettent de montrer que l’attribution des films à des auteurs dépend de diverses relations de production, de diffusion et de valorisation des films, comme la répartition des tâches et du pouvoir entre le personnel, les incertitudes et inégalités qui structurent les trajectoires des prétendants au statut d’auteur et les vertus cognitives et distinctives de la fonction-auteur employée par les critiques et une fraction des spectateurs. On mobilise pour cela les travaux de Pierre Bourdieu sur les champs de production culturelle, d’Howard Becker sur les mondes de l’art et d’autres recherches sur les professions et artistiques et non-artistiques. En outre, la thèse constate que les hiérarchies professionnelles du cinéma se sont construites à l’intersection de rapports de domination communs à différents domaines d’activité. Par exemple, le genre a servi à hiérarchiser les groupes professionnels, à répartir le travail cinématographique et à exclure les femmes de certains métiers du cinéma. Le cinéma a produit d’immenses inégalités de richesse qui ont attisées les luttes de définition de l’auteur et accru le prestige de certains métiers. La troisième partie est centrée sur les cinéastes et leurs mobilisations autour du droit de propriété des films depuis les années 1960. / Why are motion pictures often attributed to authors – or “filmmakers” – while dozens of names and occupations appear in film credits? Following Foucault’s definition of authorship as a form of appropriation, this dissertation focuses on copyright law and authorship battles in order to explain the origins and existence of film authors. Rather than considering authors as the individuals who “make” movies or as a fiction overshadowing the collective nature of filmmaking, I show that the attribution of films to authors is the result of the division of filmmaking labor and its power relations. This research uses a sociohistorical perspective and a transnational approach centered on the United States and France, where film authors are not granted the same authorship rights. It shed lights on the national, international and transnational dimensions of the appropriation of motion pictures. This study starts when film authors first appeared in copyright law: as early as the 1900s.The first part of this dissertation focuses on the writing of motion pictures’ property rights from the birth of cinema to the passing of the French copyright law of 1957 and of the Copyright Act of 1976. After decades of battles, these laws provided different definitions of film authors and granted them with different rights. Using legal publications, congressional records and reports, as well as film journals, I study French and American laws as the results of a codification process shaped by preexisting law and by the cooperation and power relation between the actors who participated in their writing. The development of motion pictures’ property rights are the cause and consequence of the constitution of a space for negotiation between lawyers, public officials, politicians and film organizations. I explain that French and American copyright norms were structured by legal expertise, competition between lawyers, relations between film organizations and the unequal economic, legal and political power of these organizations. A study of the revisions of the Berne Convention for the protection of literary and artistic works also show the interdependency between national and international norms of film authorship and authorship.The second part of the dissertation study the appropriation of motion pictures as a social relation based on the division of filmmaking labor and social labor. Film authorship battles which started in the 1910s contributed to the creation of professional hierarchies and to the differentiation of film value from other forms of economic and artistic value. I use various writings of film professionals, along with other sources, to show that film authorship was shaped by various aspects of film production, dissemination and reception (including the power relations between film professionals, the diversity of film careers and the uses of authors’ names by film critics and audiences). To study the division of filmmaking labor, I use Pierre Bourdieu’s research on cultural fields, Howard Becker’s work on art worlds as well as scholarship on professions. The dissertation also shows that the professional hierarchies of motion picture production interrelate with various forms of domination common to other fields. This dissertation is meant to be useful for scholars interested in the history of copyright law, motion pictures, authorship, the division of (artistic) labor, professions and transnational approaches.

La consommation collaborative désigne un ensemble de pratiques très variées – parmi lesquelles la location, le prêt, le don, le troc ou le partage entre consommateurs –, qui remettent en question la primauté accordée à la propriété individuelle. Ce phénomène en plein essor fait l’objet de nombreuses recherches tentant de définir, de cartographier ou d’expliquer le phénomène, en identifiant ses déterminants ou en évaluant ses impacts. Peu de travaux se sont penchés sur l’arrière-plan culturel de ce mouvement. C’est l’objet de ce travail, qui étudie la consommation collaborative dans une perspective anthropologique, autour de la question, centrale, du rapport à la propriété. Cette recherche, ancrée dans la Consumer Culture Theory (CCT), adopte une approche phénoménologique centrée sur le sens des expériences vécues par les consommateurs. Elle s’appuie au plan empirique sur une ethnographie menée sur trois terrains reflétant la diversité des pratiques collaboratives – l’habitat participatif, la plaisance collaborative et les bibliothèques de vêtements. Et elle a pour première assise théorique la mobilisation d’un cadre d’analyse original – l’infrastructure cosmologique –, inspiré des travaux de Stoczkowski (2008), qui permet de révéler les traits saillants d’une vision du monde. Les résultats mettent en lumière l’émergence, au sein d’un mouvement qui reste largement consumériste, d’une contre-culture, proche de la simplicité volontaire, caractérisée par un rapport nouveau à la propriété, dans laquelle celle-ci n’est pas simplement remplacée par l’usage mais se charge d’un sens différent. Nous l’avons nommée « cosmologie de l’alter-possession ». Cette recherche permet de mieux comprendre les comportements de consommateurs qui entretiennent un rapport ambivalent aux possessions, entre détachement et recherche de liens durables, et aspirent à des formes de propriété plus ouvertes et plus collectives en réponse aux enjeux sociaux et environnementaux d’un monde aux ressources finies. / Collaborative consumption refers to a highly varied range of practices – including rentals, loans, gifts, bartering and sharing between consumers – that challenge the primacy of individual ownership. This rapidly growing phenomenon has been the subject of many research studies that have attempted to define, map or explain it by identifying its determinants or evaluating its impact. Few researchers have focused on the cultural background to this movement. That is the focus of this study, which studies collaborative consumption from an anthropological perspective, looking at the central question of our relationship with ownership. This research, rooted in Consumer Culture Theory (CCT), adopts a phenomenological approach centred on the meaning of consumer experiences. In empirical terms, it uses an ethnographic study conducted in three different fields that reflect the diversity of collaborative practices: co-housing, collaborative pleasure boating and clothes libraries. Its main theoretical foundation is the use of an original analytical framework – cosmological infrastructure, inspired by the work of Stosczkowski (2008) – which highlights the salient traits of a particular worldview. The results reveal the emergence, within a movement that remains largely consumeristic, of a counterculture that is comparable to voluntary simplicity and characterised by a new relationship with ownership, which, for proponents of this counterculture, is not only replaced by the notion of usage but is also charged with different meaning. We call this the “cosmology of alter-possession”. This research provides a better understanding of the behaviour of consumers who maintain an ambivalent relationship with possessions, somewhere between detachment and the search for lasting links, and aspire to more open and collective forms of ownership in response to the social and environmental challenges in a world with finite resources.

Après les secteurs de la musique et de l’audiovisuel, c’est au tour du monde de l’édition de connaître sa révolution numérique. Le bon fonctionnement des industries culturelles repose notamment sur une législation ancienne en matière de propriété intellectuelle : le droit d’auteur. Celui-ci est appréhendé en économie comme le garant d’un équilibre subtil entre le maintien de l’incitation à la création des auteurs et la bonne diffusion de leurs œuvres. L’irruption du numérique bouleverse l’environnement économique dans lequel s’applique le droit d’auteur et en modifie donc les effets traditionnels. Cette thèse de doctorat en économie vise ainsi à saisir ces nouvelles conséquences sur le marché du livre afin d’évaluer la pertinence du droit d’auteur dans sa forme actuelle ainsi que celle de son éventuelle réforme. L’analyse des deux versants du droit d’auteur montre qu’il ne génère pas les mêmes effets dans l’univers du livre numérique que dans celui du papier : malgré l’abaissement des contraintes économiques, subsiste la rigidité du cadre juridique qui ne permet ni l’assurance du maintien de la rémunération des auteurs ni le saisissement des opportunités de diffusion du numérique. C’est pourquoi nous nous interrogeons sur l’avenir du droit d’auteur en proposant à la fois quelques principes généraux pour la forme future d’un droit d’auteur efficace et un exemple de disposition de droit d’auteur renouvelé qui permettrait de se saisir des opportunités ouvertes. / After the music and the audiovisual industries, it is the turn of the publishing world to start its digital revolution. The proper functioning of the cultural industries is based on a specific and old intellectual property law: the copyright. Economics usually identifies it as the guarantor of a subtle balance between the incentive for the creation of authors and good dissemination of their works. The emergence of digital technology modifies the economic environment in which copyright applies and therefore alters its traditional effects. This doctoral thesis in economics aims at seizing such new consequences on the book market in order to assess the relevance of copyright in its current form and its possible revision. The analysis of the two aspects of copyright shows that it does not produce the same effects in the market of digital books than in the traditional one: despite the decrease of economic constraints, the current legal framework remains rigid and challenges both the stability of author’s remuneration and the sound management of the dissemination opportunities on the digital book market. That is why we discuss some general principles applicable to an effective copyright and suggest some guidelines for the renewal of the copyright regulation allowing to seize opportunities offered by the digital technology both in terms of encouraging the creation and distribution of books.

Le rôle des communautés a été intentionnellement négligé dans l’analyse les modèles d'affaires de la pornographie mainstream (Darling, 2014), nous soutenons cependant qu’il est essentiel à la production de pornographie alternative. Le but de cette thèse consiste alors à comprendre le rôle des communautés et des entrepreneurs dans la production de pornographie sex-positive dans un contexte où le régime de propriété intellectuelle est faible. Nous utilisons une méthodologie qualitative pour aborder cette question, afin de documenter l'activité communautaire et entrepreneuriale de cette niche. Nous concluons que le contenu pornographique sex-pos est exploité principalement par des moyens informels, fondés sur des motivations intrinsèques et des mécanismes de réputation. Plus précisément, ces communautés jouent un rôle central dans la création de contenu protégé par le droit d'auteur, car ils agissent comme des instruments d'exploitation et d'appropriation de la propriété intellectuelle. / Business models for mainstream porn were extensively explained by Darling (2014).While the role of communities was intentionally overlooked for this segment of the industry, I argue that it is central to the production of alternative pornographies. The research question, then, consists in investigating the role of creative communities and entrepreneurs in producing digital sex-positive pornography in a context of a weak intellectual property regime. I used a qualitative method to tackle this question,in order to document community and entrepreneurial activity in the sex-positive niche. As a conclusion, I find that sex-pos pornographic content is specifically exploited mostly through informal means, based on intrinsic motivation and reputational mechanisms. More specifically, these communities and entrepreneurs are central to the creation of copyrighted content, as they act as informal instruments of intellectual property exploitation and appropriation.

La promotion de l’innovation est une valeur pour différents pays. À cette fin, ils font usage de diverses techniques juridiques pour inciter les entreprises à viser et à générer de nouveaux produits, services ou technologies. Au Brésil, la propriété intellectuelle est considérée comme une des institutions juridiques les plus aptes à préserver l’intérêt des entreprises à continuer à innover. Cependant, la période suivant l’accord ADPIC a révélé que la propriété intellectuelle a failli à sa tâche de consolider de modèle de développement par l’innovation dans le pays. Cette frustration n’est un phénomène limité au Brésil, comme nous le percevons en évaluant d’autres économies héritières du sous-développement. Au lieu d’une ample diffusion technologique, nous observons le renforcement d’une espèce de «cartel de la connaissance», avec une influence mondiale. La surprotection des droits de propriété intellectuelle s’ajoute au discours de la réduction de l’intervention concurrentielle, découlant de l’influence de l’École de Chicago. La thèse part du présupposé que ce contexte décrit n’est pas en accord avec l’idéologie constitutionnellement adoptée au Brésil, nécessitant de promouvoir une action renouvelée du Conseil Administratif de Défense Économique (CADE). La présente recherche a pour objectif de formuler une fonction régulatrice de l’innovation par l’application du droit brésilien de la concurrence. L’enquête a eu un caractère interdisciplinaire, impliquant plus particulièrement des connaissances du droit et de l’économie. Nous avons conduit une analyse des jugements rendus par les autorités de la concurrence brésilienne et européennes relatifs à la protection de l’innovation et des droits de propriété intellectuelle. L’analyse comparative avec l’expérience européenne a permis de constater que les apports de l’économie industrielle contemporaine peuvent introduire des analyses économiques plus réalistes, sans perdre de vue la sécurité juridique dans l’intervention concurrentielle. Ainsi, nous comprenons que le CADE présente des compétences constitutionnelles et légales pour intervenir, de façon renouvelée, dans des cas impliquant l’industrie de haute technologie, en privilégiant les structures économiques plus inclusives et en réduisant les barrières à l’entrée des marchés. / The promotion of innovation is a value widely pursued by the most different countries, which implement various legal techniques to ensure the necessary incentives for companies that succeed in generating new products, services and technologies. In Brazil, intellectual property is considered one of the most suitable legal institutes to better preserve the interest of companies in continuing to innovate. However, the period following Brazil’s accession to the TRIPS Agreement revealed that it did not meet the expectations of consolidating the innovation development model in the country. This frustration is not a phenomenon restricted to Brazil, as one can perceive in evaluating other economies with inheritances of underdevelopment. In lieu of a broad technological diffusion, what was observed is the consolidation of a "knowledge cartel," with global influence. The "overprotection" of intellectual property rights is added to the narrative of a reduction in competitive intervention, resulting from the influence of the Chicago School. Thus, this thesis assumes that the context previously described is not in accordance with the constitutionally adopted ideology, making it necessary to promote a renewed action of the Brazilian Administrative Council of Economic Defense (CADE, in Portuguese). The research aimed to formulate a regulatory function of innovation by means of the Brazilian Competition Law mechanisms. The research had an interdisciplinary character, involving, especially, knowledge of Law and Economy. An analysis of cases judged by Brazilian and European competition authorities on the protection of innovation and intellectual property rights was carried out. The comparative analysis with the European experience showed that the contributions of the contemporary industrial economy can introduce more realistic economic analyzes, without losing sight of the legal security in the competitive intervention. Thus, it is understood that CADE has constitutional and legal powers to intervene, in a renewed way, in cases involving the high technology industry, prioritizing more inclusive economic structures and reducing high barriers to entry in the markets in question. / A promoção da inovação é um valor amplamente perseguido pelos mais diferentes países, os quais se utilizam de diversas técnicas jurídicas para garantir os estímulos necessários às empresas que tenham sucesso em gerar novos produtos e serviços ou novas tecnologias. No Brasil, considera-se a propriedade intelectual como um dos institutos jurídicos mais aptos a preservar o interesse das empresas em continuar inovando. Entretanto, o período subsequente à adesão ao Acordo TRIPS revelou que este não cumpriu com as expectativas de consolidar o modelo de desenvolvimento via inovação no país. Essa frustração não é fenômeno restrito ao Brasil, conforme se percebe ao avaliar outras economias com heranças do subdesenvolvimento. No lugar da ampla difusão tecnológica, o que se verificou foi a consolidação de uma espécie de “cartel do conhecimento”, com influência global. Assim, a “superproteção” dos direitos de propriedade intelectual se soma à narrativa de redução de intervenção concorrencial, decorrente da influência da Escola de Chicago. A presente tese parte do pressuposto de que esse contexto descrito não está de acordo com a ideologia constitucionalmente adotada, fazendo-se necessário promover uma atuação renovada do Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica (CADE). A pesquisa teve como objetivo formular uma função reguladora da inovação por meio da aplicação do Direito Brasileiro da Concorrência. Para tanto, a investigação teve caráter interdisciplinar, envolvendo, especialmente, conhecimentos do Direito e da Economia. Foi realizada uma análise de casos julgados pelas autoridades da concorrência brasileira e europeias, versando sobre a proteção da inovação e de direitos de propriedade intelectual. Em face disso, a análise comparativa com a experiência europeia permitiu constatar que os aportes da Economia Industrial contemporânea podem introduzir análises econômicas mais realistas, sem perder de vista a segurança jurídica na intervenção concorrencial. Assim, infere-se que o CADE apresenta competências constitucionais e legais para intervir, de maneira renovada, em casos que envolvam a indústria de alta tecnologia, priorizando estruturas econômicas mais inclusivas e reduzindo as elevadas barreiras a entrada.

La thèse vise à examiner l’applicabilité des règles du droit de la concurrence, comme une solution alternative aux solutions existantes de la propriété intellectuelle dans le cas spécifique d'un de refus du titulaire d’un tel brevet. Sont étudiés: les solutions existantes, l'étendue de la protection conférée par un tel brevet, et si un tel refus du titulaire d’un brevet sur une séquence d’ADN est donc examiné en tant que pratique potentiellement répréhensible en vertu du droit de la concurrence. / Doctorat en droit / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

1. The context: The European patent system has been affected by substantial changes over the past three decades, which have raised vigorous debates at different levels. The main objective of the present dissertation is to contribute to these debates through an exploratory analysis of different changes in patenting practices – in particular the way applications are drafted and filed to patent offices –, their drivers, association with the value of patents, and potential impact on the patent system. The coming essays are therefore empirical in their essence, but are inspired by economic motivations and concerns. Their originality is threefold: it resides in the novelty of the main questions discussed, the comprehensive database specifically built to address them, and the range of statistical methods used for this purpose. The main argument throughout these pages is that patenting practices have significantly evolved in the past decades and that these developments have affected the patent system and could compromise its ability to fulfil its economic purpose. The economic objective of patents is to encourage innovation and its diffusion through the public disclosure of the inventions made. But their exploitation in the knowledge economy has assumed so many different forms that inventors have supposedly developed new patenting and filing strategies to deal with these market conditions or reap the maximum benefits from their patents. The present thesis aims at better understanding the dimensions, determinants, and some potential consequences of these developing practices.<p><p>2. The evolution: Chapter 2 presents a detailed descriptive analysis of the evolution in the size of patent applications filed to the European Patent Office (EPO). In this chapter, we propose two measures of patent voluminosity and identify the main patterns in their evolution. Based on a dataset with about 2 million documents filed at the EPO, the results show that the average voluminosity of patent applications – measured in terms of the number of pages and claims contained in each document – has doubled over the past 25 years. Nevertheless, this evolution varies widely across countries, technologies and filing procedures chosen by the applicant. This increasing voluminosity of filings has a strong impact on the workload of the EPO, which justifies the need for regulatory and policy actions.<p><p>3. The drivers: The evolution in patent voluminosity observed in chapter 2 calls for a multivariate analysis of its determinants. Chapter 3 therefore proposes and tests 4 different hypotheses that may contribute to explaining the observed inflation in size: the influence of national laws and practices and their diffusion to other countries with the progressive globalization of patenting procedures, the complexification of research activities and inventions, the emergence of new sectors with less established norms and vocabularies, and the construction of patent portfolios. The econometric results first reveal that the four hypotheses are significantly associated with longer documents and are therefore empirically supported. It appears however that the first hypothesis – the diffusion of national drafting practices through international patenting procedures – is the strongest contributor of all, resulting in a progressive harmonization of drafting styles toward American standards, which are longer by nature. The portfolio construction hypothesis seems a less important driver but nevertheless highlights substantial changes in patenting practices. These results raise two questions: Do these evolving patenting practices indicate more valuable patents? Do they induce any embarrassment for the patent system?<p><p>4. Measuring patent value: If the former of these two questions is to be addressed, measures are needed to identify higher value patents. Chapter 4 therefore proposes a review of the state of the art on patent value indicators and analyses several issues in their measurement and interpretation. Five classes of indicators proposed in the literature may be obtained directly from patent databases: the number of countries in which each patent is enforced, the number of years during which each patent has been renewed, the grant decision taken, the number of citations received from subsequent patents, and whether it has been opposed by a third party before the EPO. Because the former two measures are closely connected (the geographical scope of protection and length of maintenance can hardly be observed independently), they have been subjected to closer scrutiny in the first section of chapter 4, which shows that these two dimensions have experienced opposite evolutions. A composite measure – the Scope-Year Index – reveals that the overall trend is oriented downwards, which may suggest a substantial decline in the average value of patents. The second section of chapter 4 returns to the five initial classes of measures and underlines their main patterns. It appears that most of them witness the well-known properties of patent value: a severe skewness and large country and technology variations. A closer look at their relationships, however, reveals a high degree of orthogonality between them and opposite trends in their evolution, suggesting that they actually capture different dimensions of a patent’s value and therefore do not always pinpoint the same patents as being the most valuable. This result strongly discourages the reliance on one of the available indicators only and opens some avenue for the creation of one potential composite index of value based upon the five indicators to maximize the chances of capturing all potentially valuable patents in a large database. The proposed index reflects the intensity of the signal provided by all 5 constituting indicators on the potential value of each patent. Its declining trend reflects a rarefaction of this signal on average, leading to different plausible interpretations.<p><p>5. The links with patent value: Based upon the six indicators of value proposed in chapter 4 (the five classical ones plus the composite), the question of the association between filing strategies and the value of patents may be analysed. This question is empirically addressed in chapter 5, which focuses on all EPO patents filed between 1990 and 1995. The first section presents a comprehensive review of the existing evidence on the determinants of patent value. The numerous contributions in the field differ widely along three dimensions (the indicator of value chosen as dependent variable, the sampling methodology, and the set of variables tested as determinants), which have translated into many ambiguities across the literature. Section 2 proposes measures to identify different dimensions of filing strategies, which are essentially twofold: they relate to the routes followed by patent filings toward the EPO (PCT, accelerated processing), and to their form (excess claims, share of claims lost in examination), and construction (by assembly or disassembly, divisional). These measures are then included into an econometric model based upon the framework provided by the literature. The proposed model, which integrates the set of filing strategy variables along with some of the classical determinants, is regressed on the six available indicators separately over the full sample. In addition, the sensitivity of the available results to the indicator and the sampling methodology is assessed through 18 geographic and 14 industrial clustered regressions and about 30 regressions over random samples for each indicator. The estimates are then compared across countries, industries and indicators. These results first reveal that filing strategies are indicative of more valuable patents and provide the most stable determinants of all. And third, the results do confirm some classical determinants in their positive association with patent value, but highlight a high degree of sensitivity of most of them to the indicator or the sample chosen for the analysis, requiring much care in generalizing such empirical results.<p><p>6. The links with patent length: Chapter 6 focuses on one particular dimension of patent value: the length of patents. To do so, the censored nature of the dependent variable (the time elapsed between the filing of a patent application and its ultimate fall into the public domain) dictates the recourse to a survival time model as proposed by Cox (1972). The analysis is original in three main respects. First of all, despite the fact that renewal data have been exploited for about two decades to obtain estimates of patent value (Pakes and Schankerman, 1984), this chapter provides – to the best of our knowledge – the first comprehensive analysis of the determinants of patent length. Second, whereas most of the empirical literature in the field focuses on granted patents and investigates their maintenance, the analysis reported here includes all patent applications. This comprehensive approach is dictated by the provisional rights provided by pending applications to their holders and by the legal uncertainty these represent for competitors. And third, the model integrates a wide set of explanatory variables, starting with the filing strategy variables proposed in chapter 5. The main results are threefold: first, they clearly show that patent rights have significantly increased in length over the past decades despite a small apparent decline in the average grant rate, but largely due to the expansion of the examination process. Second, they indicate that most filing strategies induce considerable delays in the examination process, possibly to the benefit of the patentee, but most certainly to the expense of legal uncertainty on the markets. And third, they confirm that more valuable patents (more cited or covering a larger geographical scope) take more time to process, and live longer, whereas more complex applications are associated with longer decision lags, but also with lower grant and renewal rates.<p><p>7. Conclusions: The potential economic consequences and some policy implications of the findings from the dissertation are discussed in chapter 7. The evolution of patenting practices analysed in these works has some direct consequences for the stakeholders of the patent system. For the EPO, they generate a considerable increase in workload, resulting in growing backlogs and processing lags. For innovative firms, this phenomenon translates into an undesired increase in legal uncertainty, for it complicates the assessment of the limits to each party’s rights and hence of the freedom to operate on a market, which is precisely what the so-called ‘patent trolls’ and ‘submariners’ may be looking for. Although empirical evidence is lacking, some fear that this may result in underinvestment in research, development or commercialization activities (e.g. Hall and Harhoff, 2004). In addition, legal uncertainty is synonymous with an increased risk of litigation, which may hamper the development of SMEs and reduce the level of entrepreneurship. Finally, for society, we are left with a contrasted picture, which is hard to interpret. The European patent system wishes to maintain high quality standards to reduce business uncertainty around granted patents, but it is overloaded with the volume of applications filed, resulting in growing backglogs which translate into legal uncertainty surrounding pending applications. The filing strategies that contribute to this situation might reflect a legitimate need for more time and flexibility in filing more valuable patents, but they could also easily turn into real abuses of the system, allowing some patentees to obtain and artificially maintain provisional rights conferred by pending applications on inventions that might not meet the patentability requirements. Distinguishing between these two cases goes beyond the scope of the present dissertation, but should they be found abusive, they should be fought for they consume resources and generate uncertainty. And if legitimate, then they should be understood and the system adapted accordingly (e.g. by adjusting fees to discourage some strategies, raising the inventive step, fine-tuning the statutory term in certain technologies, providing more legal tools for patent examiners to reject unpatentable applications, etc.) so as to better serve the need of inventors for legal protection in a more efficient way, and to adapt the patent system to the challenges it is or will be facing. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Le droit de marque préoccupe aux plans législatif et judiciaire. L'intérêt s'explique par l'essor de la contrefaçon à l'échelle mondiale. La protection du droit de marque contre la contrefaçon mérite donc d'être renforcée. Pour cela, il convient de définir l'étendue du droit à protéger. Le droit de marque, droit exclusif d'exploitation d'une marque, est décrit majoritairement comme un droit de propriété d'un type particulier. Or, une étude comparée du droit de marque et du droit de propriété fait apparaître davantage de différences que de ressemblances. Identifier l'objet du droit de marque dans la place qu'occupe la marque sur le marché dans l'esprit du public et des concurrents amène à une nature juridique nouvelle, celle du droit de marché. Dès lors, les concurrents indélicats qui commettent des actes de contrefaçon empiètent incontestablement sur un droit de marché appartenant à autrui puisqu'ils usurpent la place de marché réservée à travers l'enregistrement de la marque. Par ailleurs, l'acte fautif cause un dommage plus ou moins grave au titulaire de la marque. La contrefaçon portant sur des produits authentiques est d'une faible gravité par rapport à celle qui porte sur des produits non authentiques car alors, les marchandises indûment marquées, souvent de qualité médiocre, risquent de nuire à la santé ou la sécurité de l'homme et de son environnement, et l'image de la marque contrefaite n'en est qu'altérée. Ainsi, si au pénal l'amende pourrait prendre la forme d'un pourcentage sur le chiffre d'affaires réalisé par le contrefacteur, au civil la condamnation à verser à la victime les fruits de l'activité contrefaisante permettrait de dissuader la contrefaçon lucrative. / The trademark rights are a legislative and judicial concern. The interest is due to the rise of worldwide counterfeiting. Trademark protection against counterfeiting deserves to be strengthened. It is then necessary to define the scope of the rights to protect. Trademark rights, exclusive rights to use a trademark, are described mainly as an ownership of a particular type. However, a comparison study of trademark rights and ownership reveals more differences than similarities. Identify the object of trademark rights in the place of the trademark on the market in the minds of the public and competitors leads to a new legal nature : the market rights. Therefore, unscrupulous competitors who commit acts of infringement undoubtedly impinge on the market rights belonging to others as they usurp the marketplace reserved through trademark registration. The fault causes a more or less severe damage to the trademark owner. Counterfeiting on genuine products is a low gravity compared to the one on non genuine products because then improperly marked goods, often of poor quality, are likely to harm the health or safety of humans and its environment. Thus, the counterfeit trademark is altered. Therefore, under criminal law, the fine could take the form of a percentage of the sales made ​​by the infringer. Under civil law, restitutionary damages would deter lucrative counterfeiting.