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Examiner Characteristics and Patent Office Outcomes

Mark A. Lemley¹; Bhaven N. Sampat²

¹ Stanford Law School and Durie Tangri LLP · ² Columbia University

In this paper, we show that there are important differences across patent examiners at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. We show that more experienced examiners cite less prior art, are more likely to grant patents, and are more likely to grant patents without any rejections. These results suggest that the most important decisions made by the patent office are significantly affected by the happenstance of which examiner gets an application. They also point to human resource policies as potentially important levers, hitherto neglected, in patent system reform.

DOI

10.1162/rest_a_00194

Volume

94 (3)

Pages

817-827

Language

en

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