This paper examines the factors that cause differences in patent examination outcomes at the trilateral patent offices using a dataset of more than 70,000 non-PCT patent applications filed at the European and Japanese Patent Offices conditional upon them being granted by the United States Patent...

While most developed countries apply the same criteria to determine whether an invention is eligible to be protected by a patent, there are substantial procedural differences in the way in which different patent offices examine a patent application. This means that a patent application may be...