Geography of Patent Law: An Institutional Model of Variation and Convergence of Judicial Beliefs

Legal norms are inherently open to interpretation, often leading litigants to perceive inconsistency. We introduce the concept of judicial beliefs —institutionalized understandings of law—to examine how patent judges foster jurisdictional consistency. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with elite judges at Germany’s leading patent infringement courts, we identify career socialization, collegial deliberation, and judicial abrogation as key mechanisms of how judicial beliefs institutionalize. Because these mechanisms operate at different spatial scales, we propose a model of how judicial beliefs shape both legal variation between courts and convergence within the national jurisdiction. We extend this model to the European level, where the newly established Unified Patent Court seeks to harmonize jurisprudence across diverse national traditions. Our study underscores the crucial role of judicial beliefs in balancing legal variation and consistency, an essential condition for a robust and innovative European patent system.