The EPO Administrative Council has now made available the annual compendium of statistics on activity at the EPO and member state offices in 2023. The report provides a more in depth overview of patent figures, including a detailed breakdown of EPO Opposition figures.
EPO Opposition highlights include:
- 2.4% of patents for which the opposition period expired in 2023 were opposed
- average of 1.31 oppositions filed per opposed patent
- 29% of oppositions rejected, 46% of patents maintained in amended form, 25% of patents revoked
- 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)
- Chemistry (total 625 patents opposed, 4.6% of patents opposed), and in particular Pharmaceuticals had the largest number of oppositions filed (137)
- Food Chemistry had the highest opposition rate (12.7%)
- Electrical Engineering (0.7%) had the lowest opposition rates
- For fields where more than 10 oppositions were filed, Computer Technology (60%), Digital Communication (55%), Audio-Visual Technology (43%), Pharmaceuticals (39%) and Telecommunications (38%) had the highest revocation rates
- Oppositions were rejected most in Civil Engineering (46%), Textile and Paper Machines (42%), Handling (40%), Analysis of Biological materials (38%), and Materials and Metallurgy (37%)
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
