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Showing posts from June, 2018

Patent Quality Markers From IPRs, District Courts, and Examination at the Patent Office

There are about 600,000 utility patent applications filed in the U.S. each year, feeding into over 8,000 patent examiners at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Each of these patent applications reaches an end-of-life, by being granted, by being abandoned, or by having the patent term expire before grant, which is equivalent to abandonment but much more expensive. Typically, these final dispositions are reached by the patent owners and patent examiners without the involvement of third parties. With all of this data, there are a lot of significant lessons that can be learned by looking at statistics from patent examination. In fact, as indicated in my prior posts and presentations, I think these lessons learned can help us decide where to focus our claims, what to add to our specifications, and even in what spaces we should be inventing more often. In contrast, there are about 4,000 patent cases filed in district courts each year, with about 10-14% reaching a decision on the merits