The U.S patent system has been under attack for about a decade. One of the main justifications for changing the patent system has centered on the issue of patent quality. According to patent critics, patents are bad or low quality, justifying major changes to the patent examination and review...

In this paper I show how an important quality measure for the university inventions, the grant amounts, affects the probability of entering a secrecy agreement and a license. A secrecy is a confidential agreement used by the firms to learn about the quality of inventions, prior to licensing the...

This Comment responds to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Request for Comments on Enhancing Patent Quality, published February 5, 2015. It proceeds in two parts. First, I share two general observations about the PTO’s current slate of New Quality Proposals: specifically, it fails to...