Partisan patent examiners? Exploring the link between the political ideology of patent examiners and patent office outcomes

Joseph Raffiee, Florenta Teodoridis and Daniel Fehder

Research Policy, 2023, vol. 52, issue 9

Abstract: Patents are key strategic resources which enable firms to appropriate innovation returns and prevent rival imitation. Patent examiners – individuals who may be subject to various sources of bias – play a central role in determining which inventions are awarded patent rights. Using a novel dataset, we explore if one increasingly prevalent source of bias – political ideology – manifests in examiner decision-making. Reassuringly, our analysis suggests that the political ideology of patent examiners is largely unrelated to patent office outcomes. However, we do find evidence suggesting politically active conservative-leaning examiners are more likely to grant patents relative to politically active liberal-leaning examiners, but only for patent applications where there is ambiguity regarding what constitutes patentable subject matter and hence examiners have greater discretion.

Keywords: Patents; Patent examiners; Political ideology; Innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:52:y:2023:i:9:s0048733323001373

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2023.104853

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