Using application-level data from the Patent Office from 2001 to 2012, merged with personnel data on patent examiners …, we explore the extent to which the key decision of examiners—whether to allow a patent—is shaped by the granting styles … grant rate of her peer group, an examiner in her first two years at the Patent Office will experience a 0.15 standard …

, especially in the workplace. In this paper, we attempt to fill these gaps by exploring procrastination among U.S. patent … take advantage of the natural experiment afforded by the Patent Office's staggered implementation of its telecommuting … literature over the efficiency of the patent examination process, we assess the consequences of procrastination for the quality …

.S. Patent Office since 2001, we find that startups that win the patent “lottery” by drawing lenient examiners have, on average …, 55% higher employment growth and 80% higher sales growth five years later. Patent winners also pursue more, and higher … quality, follow-on innovation. Winning a first patent boosts a startup's subsequent growth and innovation by facilitating …

Patent pools, which allow competing firms to combine their patents, have emerged as a prominent mechanism to resolve …

This paper surveys the major changes in patent policy and practice that have occurred in the last two decades in the U … effects of changes in patent policy. Despite the significance of the policy changes and the wide availability of detailed data … patent policy are few. Possible reasons for these limited results are discussed, and possible avenues for future research are …

The impacts of two recent changes in US patent policy depend on the length of time it takes for an invention to go … debates. We use data on U.S. patent applications and grants to determine the factors influencing the length of the patent … examination process. We augment this analysis with interviews of patent examiners, leading to a better understanding of the …

The recent surge in U.S. patenting and expansion of patentable subject matter has increased patent office backlogs and …. At the same time patent litigation and its costs are rising. This paper explores the potential of a post-grant review … process modeled on the European opposition system to improve patent quality, reveal overlooked prior art, and reduce …

patent. The discovery of the periodic table in 1869 offers an opportunity to test this idea. Exhibition data show that …