Examination workloads, grant decision bias and examination quality of patent office

Junbyoung Oh and Yee Kyoung Kim
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Junbyoung Oh: Department of Economics, Inha University
Yee Kyoung Kim: Korea Institute of S&T Evaluation and Planning

No 2017-3, Inha University IBER Working Paper Series from Inha University, Institute of Business and Economic Research

Abstract: This paper investigates how increased examination workloads at patent office affect the patent examination process and tests whether workloads have any external effect on examiners' decisions. Using novel micro-level data, we provide the first empirical evidence that examiner decisions are systematically biased as workload increases, with examiners being more likely to grant a patent than to reject it. The regression results also indicate that the quality of examinations decreases as workload increases. In appeal trials, the likelihood of grant decision reversal significantly increases as workload increases, while the likelihood of the revocation of a refusal decision exhibits statistically significant negative relationship with increased workloads. These results imply that an examiner who lacks sufficient time for a prior art search tends to grant a patent and, consequently, a large workload decreases the quality of examinations by resulting in unqualified patents.

Keywords: Examination workloads; grant decision bias; type II error; quality of examinations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K0 O30 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2017-04, Revised 2017-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino and nep-law
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inh:wpaper:2017-3

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