Compelling scientific results for IP research funded under the EPO Academic Research Programme

19. Juli 2022

Today the EPO has published
four research reports developed by leading European universities and
institutions with funding from the EPO Academic Research Programme (ARP). The
research projects were awarded in 2019, receiving grants totalling €300 000.

The completed research projects addressed a diverse range of
topics, such as

• The impact of the use of
  patents as collateral in loan negotiations in different European countries
• The complementarity of
  different IP rights by linking patent to trademark data
• The assessment and
  forecast of the commercial value of patents by SMEs
• The interplay between
  science and invention networks in knowledge cohesion across Europe

The grant holders have been interviewed
about their main research results and implications for policymakers. These engaging
interviews will be released as a series of podcasts called  „Research into patents“ as of September. Stay
tuned!

In response to the 2021
call, five projects have been proposed by the ARP Scientific Committee, which will
benefit from grants totalling €600 000 under the ARP framework which aims at promoting
primarily collaborative research. These projects will report in between two and
three years‘ time and aim to investigate, i.a. how scientific clusters signal
their later impact on technological developments, the use of deep learning to
trace the flow of knowledge from science to technology, visual and multimodal
patent search, and digital training systems for intellectual property.

The
EPO launched the Academic Research Programme in 2017 to encourage more research
into the role of patents in the European economy and to promote the sharing of
research results. The programme complements the EPO’s role in disseminating
patent information, for example through its worldwide patent database
Espacenet, and in facilitating patent analytics through tools such as PATSTAT.
It is also designed to develop fruitful contacts between academic researchers
and the many EPO staff who have an interest in such interactions.

Last
year the EPO launched its call for proposals for the ARP in a revamped version.
With this new scheme, the EPO will support collaborative research with
scientific partner institutions, which can benefit from a wider scope, bigger budget
and longer duration. The ARP foresees closer interaction between researchers
and staff from across the EPO.