When Do Applicants Search for Prior Art?

Bhaven Sampat

Journal of Law and Economics, 2010, vol. 53, issue 2, 399-416

Abstract: There is concern that patent examiners lack the resources, capabilities, and incentives to properly identify the prior art against which patent applications are evaluated and that, as a result, they issue a large number of low-quality patents. In this context, the extent to which applicants have incentives to contribute prior art is an important question. This paper uses data on examiner and applicant citations in U.S. patents to examine this question. The data show that applicants contribute a surprisingly low share of citations to previous patents and routinely fail to identify even their own previous patents. However, there are also stark differences across fields. Within fields, and even within firms, there is self-sorting: applicants contribute more prior art for their more important inventions. The results suggest that incentives to search for prior art vary across industries and inventions, which reflects underlying differences in the strategic reasons for obtaining patent protection. (c) 2010 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (48)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/651959 link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jlawec:v:53:y:2010:i:2:p:399-416

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Law and Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().