Science Research Management ›› 2015, Vol. 36 ›› Issue (6): 119-127.

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A research on evaluating the legal quality of pharmaceutical patents by patent characteristics

Liu Lichun1, Qi Su2   

  1. 1. Institute of Intellectual Property Strategy, Huazhong University of Science & Technology, Wuhan 430074, Hubei, China;
    2. Institute of Intellectual Property, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
  • Received:2013-12-16 Revised:2014-10-23 Online:2015-06-25 Published:2015-06-23

Abstract: Some China drug patents that Pharmaceutical Multinational Corporations held could not meet the legal requirements of China Patent Law on granted patent. This paper collects Pharmaceutical Multinational Corporations' patents that have suffered invalidation application from 2001 to 2012 and discusses theoretically the patent characteristics that could significantly influence legal quality according to the characteristics of pharmaceutical industry. Then, this paper makes an empirical analysis on the influence of the patent characteristics to legal quality and establishes the regression equations by the patent characteristics and the probability ending with revocation. The empirical results show the expression of the patent characteristics on the legal quality of pharmaceutical patents is different from other industries. Five patent characteristics, including the number of claims, examples, etc., significantly influence legal quality of pharmaceutical patents. The direction and the degree of the explanatory from patent characteristics to legal quality and economic quality are different.

Key words: pharmaceutical patent, patent characteristic, invalidation application, legal quality

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