We really are experts when it comes to opposing patents and our enviable success rate speaks for itself. Only 7.4% of all patents that we have opposed over the last 15 years have been maintained as granted. That's significantly better than the EPO’s 15-year average of 24.6%. Our figures are even more impressive when it comes to appeals, where on average only 2.7% of patents that we have opposed have been maintained as granted, compared to the EPO’s average of 11.9%.
Our success rate is similarly impressive when we look at the proportion of patents that are completely revoked following an opposition handled by us, with 46.1% of all patents that we have opposed over the last 15 years having been revoked. Again, this is significantly better than the EPO average of 37.3%. These figures get even better following an appeal, with 59.3% of patents we’ve opposed having been revoked completely compared to the EPO average of 46.4%.
We decided to take an even closer look and see how the stats changed if we focussed on IPC A61K. In this class, 96% of all patents we’ve opposed were revoked or amended in some way - so only 4% survived unscathed and were maintained as granted following opposition by Mewburn Ellis. Compare this to the EPO average of 20% and you can really see where our expertise makes a difference.
We have a better-than-average success rate for single opponent defensive oppositions in A61K too. 32% of patents we have defended in this class over the last 10 years have been maintained as granted, which is better than the EPO average of 24%. Similarly, only 21% of patents that we have defended in this class over the last 10 years have been revoked, which is considerably better than the EPO average of 40%.
We also looked in more detail at IPC code C7. In this class, 96% of all patents that we opposed in the last 15 years have been revoked or amended in some way as well, so as with A61K, only 4% have been maintained as granted. This is once again much better than the EPO average, where 21% of all opposed patents in C7 have been maintained as granted over the last 15 years.
We also have a much better-than-average success rate for single opponent defensive oppositions in C7 over the last 10 years, where 40% of patents we have defended were maintained as granted in comparison to the EPO average of 26%. Furthermore, 19% of patents we defended were revoked, which is much better than the average EPO revocation rate of 34% for C7.
*Source: Statistics provided by IpQuants AG