The EPO Administrative Council has now made available the annual compendium of statistics on activity at the EPO and member state offices in 2021. The report provides a more in depth overview of patent figures compared to the EPO Patent Index, including detailed breakdown of EPO Opposition figures.
EPO Opposition highlights include:
- 2.5% of patents for which the opposition period expired in 2021 were opposed (2.4% in 2020)
- average of 1.25 oppositions filed per opposed patent (1.28 in 2020)
- 32.2% of oppositions rejected, 41.8% of patents maintained in amended form (34.1% in 2020), 25.9% of patents revoked (34.8% in 2020)
- 19.3 months mean duration of opposition proceedings (from expiry of opposition filing period to date of opposition decision) for standard opposition cases (excluding cases with more than one opponent, participation of a legal member or re-scheduling of oral proceedings) (15.4 months in 2020)
- Chemistry (total 1264 patents opposed), and in particular Pharmaceuticals had the largest number of oppositions filed (376)
- The sub-field with most oppositions filed was “Other Special Machines” (203) in Mechanical Engineering
- Food Chemistry had the highest opposition rate (13.3%)
- Telecommunications (0.4%) and Basic Communication Processes (0.3%) had the lowest opposition rates
- For fields where more than 10 oppositions were filed, Audio-Visual Technology (43%) and Food Chemistry (40%) had the highest revocation rates
- Handling (15%), Other Consumer Goods (15%), Furniture, games (17%), Digital Communications (17%), Mechanical Elements (18%), and Textile and Paper Machines (19%) had the lowest revocation rates
The full set of opposition rates and outcomes in each field of technology are reproduced below:
Further information, and the full report can be found here
Published earlier this year, the EPO Board of Appeal annual report on statistics for 2021 can be found here
