Friday, January 30th, 2026
4.00pm CET

Patents as a key tool for innovation and economic growth

Global Digital Encounters 41

Objectives

Since the start of the 1st industrial revolution and up to now, patents represent a key tool for innovation and economic growth: by providing inventors a safe basis for promoting their research results and allowing investors and society to identifying innovation opportunities and making them blossom, they play a key role in modern economy and society.

Why and how patents serve as a key tool for innovation and economic growth? How patent statistics translate this role? How does the national, international and company race for patents can materialise this role? Are patents the only key tools for innovation and economic growth? Do AI, and tomorrow quantum technologies, affect the importance of patents as a key tool? Can AI used in patent granting procedures affect the role and importance of patents positively or negatively? Should more limits, or less limits, be imposed to current disclosure mechanisms, and to right to use patent mechanisms in the current geopolitical context? Why is the European Patent Office considered worldwide as a model for quality in patents and a major success story for the European construction? How to make patent measurements jointly between competing countries and regions of the World? The Chief Economist of the European Patent Office will discuss, together with distinguished Speakers and Moderator, these questions that are central, for not only European States and inventors and innovators in Europe, but also worldwide.

Report

Meet the Panel*

Yann MÉNIÈRE

EPO Chief Economist

Axel FERRAZZINI

4iP Council Managing Director (EU)

Fredrik EDMAN

Patent Advisor at LU Innovation, University of Lund (Sweden)

Laurent MANDERIEUX

Professor of Intellectual Property Law at L. Bocconi University of Milan, Italy

Countdown!

GDE 41: Patents as a key tool for innovation and economic growth

Friday, January 30th, 2026 | 4.00pm CET

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About our Speakers

Yann MÉNIÈRE

Yann Ménière is Chief Economist at the European Patent Office. Formerly, he was Professor of Economics on leave from MINES ParisTech, where he was leading the Chair on “IP and Markets for Technology”. His research and expertise relate to the economics of innovation, competition and intellectual property. In recent years, he has been focusing more specifically on IP and standards, markets for technology, and IP issues in climate negotiations. Besides his academic publications, he has also written a number of policy studies for the European Commission, French government, the French Patent Office and other public organisations. Outside MINES ParisTech, he has been teaching the economics of IT standards at Imperial College Business School and the economics of IP law at the Law School of Université Catholique de Louvain.

Axel FERRAZZINI

Born in 1978 in France, Axel Ferrazzini initially trained as an engineer in computer science and then specialised in deep-tech technology strategy. He is listed as an inventor on 20 patents and has contributed to standards development organisations for more than 20 years. Axel has served as an elected member of the ETSI Board since 2014, of the Global Intellectual Property Alliance Board since 2022 and is ranked in the IAM Strategy 300: The World’s Leading IP Strategists.  

He currently leads 4iP Council, a research organisation promoting the role of intellectual property in European innovation, and heads the programme for the quantum technologies major at a leading engineering computer science school. 

Fredrik EDMAN

Member of the Board of the Saco-S Council. Chairman of Engineers of Sweden at Lund University since 2013, union representative since 2004. Member of both Engineers of Sweden and SULF.

Fredrik represents Saco-S on the Board of LTH, Faculty of Engineering. Within Saco-S locally, he works mainly with issues related to intellectual property rights and individual cases. 

Fredrik has a great interest in research and education policy, utilisation of research results, open science and issues related to intellectual property rights.

Prof. Laurent MANDERIEUX (Italy/France)

Professor of Intellectual Property Law at L. Bocconi University of Milan, Italy, Member of the Directorate Board, Bocconi LL.M in Law of Internet Technology, Director, Bocconi Summer Schools in Law, Chair, European IP Teachers’ Network, Coordinator, Transatlantic IP Academy and is invited Professor / Lecturer of Intellectual Property Law in Universities and Training institutes in many countries of Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. In addition to his IP teaching, numerous Publications, and IP research activities at Bocconi, one of the most prestigious and high-ranked Universities in the European Union, Laurent Manderieux is Senior Intellectual Property Expert for various international Organisations and governments. He was for many years Official and Senior Official at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva, Switzerland: in particular, as Head, WIPO Public Affairs and Media Relations, he took care of training and information for government officials, lawyers, researchers, scientists, and business circles (in this capacity he prepared training material and IP publications, and made up to 100 presentations per year). Before joining WIPO, he also worked for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) in Rome, Italy; and at the European Union in Brussels. Over the last two decades, he wrote numerous publications and studies, and undertook international projects for the EU, the EPO, UNDP, UNCTAD, WIPO, IDLO, OIF, and various Governments. In this context, visited some 140 countries. He works in French, English, Italian, Spanish, and German. Member of Fide’s International Academic Council.

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