Opposition Procedure Before The European Patent Office - Statistics, Costs and Duration

Statistics, Costs and Duration

Overall, about 6% of the European patents granted by the European Patent Office are opposed. Of those, over the course of 1980-2005, about 1/3 were revoked, 1/3 were maintained in an amended form, which generally means "reduced in scope", and 1/3 were maintained as granted, that is, the opposition was rejected. The opposition rate (i.e. the number of oppositions filed per 100 granted patents) before the EPO is consistently higher in the closest available proxy for the pharmaceutical sector than it is in organic chemistry and in all sectors (overall EPO average).

Filing an opposition before the EPO is reportedly relatively affordable, "as the cost varies between €6000 and €50,000 (including patent lawyers’ fees)" (as of 2009). In contrast, the costs for litigating a European patent can be much higher ("For example, in Germany the total litigation costs can be as high as €2 million with €10 million at stake"). An opposition case is reported to take on average three years to be handled by the EPO.