Patent statistics (no inventor)

You seem to enjoy the interesting patent statistics I've recently shared, so here we go again.🤓

Out of 140000 granted European patent documents*, we have found 5 patents not having inventors. Yes, only 5 patents. That’s about 0.0036% of the cases. 

So, what does this exactly mean? Can a patent not have an inventor?

No. In fact, if there is no designation of an inventor, the European patent application will be refused by the EPO (Legal basis: Art.81, Art.90(5), R.19 and R.60(1) EPC).

However, the inventor's right to be mentioned can be waived under R.20(1) EPC by filing a written waiver. Since we only examined granted patents, we can conclude that the 5 interesting patents we have found, do have inventors, but their names are not published. (In this case, the waiver is also excluded from file inspection.)

It surprised me that waiving the inventor's right to be mentioned happens so rarely. 

Patent attorneys, did you have any cases during your career when you had to file a waiver under R.20(1) EPC?

*Again, this data comes from checking 140000 granted European patent documents (from 2019) for our EP validation platform (➡️ passport.pintz.com).