30 April 2014
The EPO's Economic and Scientific Advisory Board (ESAB) has issued a statement on the Unitary Patent package, based on a study commissioned to Europe Economics and a report of a two-day workshop. At its third annual meeting in February 2014, ESAB members decided for their 2014 activities programme to resume the work already engaged on the possible impact of a grace period in Europe from an economic perspective and also to study the following question: "What is the impact of the trend of increasing patent concentration (patent pools, patent funds, new patent intermediaries, acquisitions of patent portfolios) on competition and innovation policy?"
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