IGIR/IPKM Expert lectures

Patent opposition allows firms to challenge newly granted patents, but doing so openly creates a trade-off between invalidating a patent and disclosing strategic information. Despite the fact that anonymous opposition reduces the chances of success, its use is nevertheless increasing. Combining econometric evidence and expert interviews, this study investigates several hypotheses on why companies engage in such anonymous attacks and reflects on what this means for the patent system.

Rudi Bekkers is a Full Professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, specialising in the relationship between standardisation and intellectual property rights. Over the last 25 years, he has published papers in established journals, such as Research Policy, the Journal of Economic Geography, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Technovation, the Academy of Management Annals, and California Management Review. He conducted more than 75 commissioned studies for international organisations, national governments, semi-public bodies and other organisations, including the European Commission (EC), the OECD, ETSI, UN/ITU, and many others. These studies include the 2014 study ‘Patents and Standards’ and the 2020 study “Pilot Study for Essentiality Assessment of Standard Essential Patents,” both for the EC. He serves as an appointed member of the High-Level Forum on Standardisation (HLF) of the EC and was appointed as a Committee Member by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences. He advises IEEE on its role in Europe as an Appointed Member of the IEEE-SA Europe Advisory Council and serves on the Dutch government advisory board on standards (Forum Standardisatie). Finally, he served in over two dozen legal conflicts in the US, Europe, and elsewhere, often as an expert witness.