Patent examination is a complex and information-intensive process. For researchers and policy analysts studying this process, it is important to have a basic understanding of how patents typically proceed through examination and how the behaviour and incentives facing examiners might influence...

A surprisingly small amount of empirical research has been focused on the process of obtaining a patent grant from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). The purpose of this document is to describe the Patent Examination Dataset (PatEX), make a large amount of information from the...

A surprisingly small amount of empirical research has been focused on the process of obtaining a patent grant from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). One major reason for this lack of research has been the paucity of readily-available data on the examination of applications....

A surprisingly small amount of empirical research has been focused on the process of obtaining a patent grant from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). The purpose of this document is to describe the Patent Examination Dataset (PatEX), make a large amount of information from the...

Although many developing economies are increasingly impacting the global economy, China’s impact has been the greatest by far. Once hindered from competition by political and economic restrictions, China is now a major economic player. Curiously, China’s increased impact has coincided with...

The purpose of this working paper is to investigate utility patent applications to the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) from inventors residing in China. It first focuses on the growth in the numbers of applications, putting this growth in context by comparing it to other important emerging...

This article describes the “USPTO Patent Examination Research Dataset” (PatEx), and explores possible selection issues and the representativeness of the 9.1 million US patent application records it contains. We find that data are sparse for years before 1981, and that serious selection...