The pandemic as a stress test of the patent system – a legal-economic re-examination of exclusivity, liability rules, open innovation, and complementary policy levers

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Ansgar Ohly; Dr. Martin Stierle
• Subject Area: Private Law ; Economic Policy, Applied Economics
• Term: from 2021 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 458653325

• Final Report Year: 2025

Final Report Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic put patent law to a stress test. Academics, politicians and members of the civil society called for a waiver, suspending patent protection of COVID-19-relevant inventions. Our project concludes that the incentive provided by patent law played a significant role in enabling vaccines to be invented and widely made available within a relatively short period of time. In this respect, patent law has passed the stress test. Nevertheless, in view of future crises, the law should strengthen the incentives for voluntary cooperation (open innovation), for example by encouraging patent owners to make patent pledges. The possibility of granting compulsory licences should be further developed, not least at EU level, as an incentive for cooperation and as a fallback solution in the event that patent owners refuse to license. We believe that this will further strengthen the crisis resilience of a system that has proven itself in principle in the stress test. These results contribute to research within the patent system, but they are also intended as policy recommendations.

Publications

• Ausschließlichkeit in der (Corona-)Krise – Über Alternativen und Zugangslösungen im pandemierelevanten Innovationsermöglichungsrecht. JuristenZeitung, 76(2), 71-80.
  Stierle, Martin
  
• Unverhältnismäßigkeit, Injunction Gap und Geheimnisschutz im Prozess. In: GRUR 2021, 1229–1241
  Ohly, Ansgar & Stierle, Martin
  
• Der Ausgleichsanspruch gemäß § 139 I 4 PatG als Rechtsfortwirkungsanspruch. In: GRUR 2022, 303–309
  Ohly, Ansgar
  
• The Latest Amendment to the German Law on Patent Injunctions: The New Statutory Disproportionality Exception and Third-Party Interests. GRUR International, 71(12), 1123-1137.
  Stierle, Martin & Hofmann, Franz
  
• Die Effektivität des Zwangslizenzrechts. Reformbedarf im deutschen Patentrecht? In: GRUR 2024, 419–428
  Stierle, Martin
  
• Die Reform der patentrechtlichen Zwangslizenz durch die Europäische Union. In: GRUR Patent 2024, 2–11
  Stierle, Martin
  
• Kreation Innovation Märkte - Creation Innovation Markets. Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
  Thouvenin, Florent; Peukert, Alexander; Jaeger, Thomas & Geiger, Christophe
  
• The Interface Between Patents and Regulatory Exclusivities and the View on the New EU Proposals Concerning Patent Compulsory Licensing and Regulatory Exclusivities. GRUR International, 73(7), 617-630.
  Valtere, Laura