Patenting Coffee - IP Protection and Its Impact on Innovation in the Coffee-Capsule Market in: Varieties of European Economic Law and Regulation (Studies in European Economic Law and Regulation, 3), Springer, Berlin 2014, 489 - 503 (
Despite a hard to kill belief patents are not a booster for innovation per se but an instrument of competition and innovation policy that needs to be used in a careful manner and with a clear understanding of its functioning and consequences. In the last decades discussions about the strengths and weaknesses of the patenting system have circulated mostly around pharmaceuticals or the information technology. Some of the most important questions addressed in these discussions are the ever rising and unmanageably large number of patents, a phenomenon known as patent thickets, the overlapping of different intellectual property rights, and in consequence the limitation of necessary competition.
