Prior art patent citations have become a popular measure of patent quality and knowledge flow between firms. Interpreting these measurements is complicated, in some cases, because prior art citations are added by patent examiners as well as by patent applicants. The U.S. Patent and Trademark...

Researchers studying innovation increasingly use indicators based on patent citations. However, it is well known that not all citations originate from applicants--patent examiners contribute to citations listed in issued patents--and that this could complicate interpretation of findings in this...

Analysis of patent citations is a core methodology in the study of knowledge diffusion. However, citations made by patent examiners have not been separately reported, adding unknown noise to the data. We leverage a recent change in the reporting of patent data showing citations added by...

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...