Death squad or quality improvement? The impact of introducing post-grant review on U.S. patent legal quality

IF 8 1区管理学 Q1 MANAGEMENT

Research Policy Pub Date : 2025-03-06 DOI:10.1016/j.respol.2025.105205

Arianna Martinelli, Julia Mazzei

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

We investigate how the introduction of post-grant reviews at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office through the America Invents Act (AIA) has influenced the behavior of patent applicants and examiners. This reform may incentivize applicants to narrow the scope of their patents, thereby reducing the risk of post-grant reviews and enhancing patent legal quality. To test this hypothesis, we employ a standard Difference-in-Differences (DID) analysis and find that applicants are more likely to narrow the scope of their patents. This change has resulted in fewer challenges to U.S. patents, yielding estimated annual savings of 62 to 148 million. When applicants do not preemptively narrow the scope during filing, we observe tougher scrutiny during the examination process, as examiners effectively compensate for the applicant’s lack of action. However, this “disciplinary effect” of narrowing patent scope is absent in complex fields characterized by patent thickets, where the reform does not lead to significant improvements in U.S. patent legal quality.

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敢死队还是质量改进？引入授权后审查对美国专利法质量的影响

我们调查了美国专利商标局通过美国发明法案（AIA）引入的授权后审查如何影响专利申请人和审查员的行为。这一改革可能会激励申请人缩小其专利的范围，从而减少授权后审查的风险，提高专利法律质量。为了验证这一假设，我们采用了标准的差异中差异（DID）分析，发现申请人更有可能缩小其专利的范围。这一变化减少了美国专利面临的挑战，预计每年可节省6200万至1.48亿美元。如果申请人在申请过程中没有先发制人地缩小范围，我们观察到在审查过程中更严格的审查，因为审查员有效地补偿了申请人的缺乏行动。然而，在以专利丛林为特征的复杂领域，这种缩小专利范围的“纪律效应”是不存在的，在这些领域，改革并没有导致美国专利法律质量的显著提高。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Research Policy MANAGEMENT-

CiteScore

12.80

自引率

6.90%

发文量

182

期刊介绍： Research Policy (RP) articles explore the interaction between innovation, technology, or research, and economic, social, political, and organizational processes, both empirically and theoretically. All RP papers are expected to provide insights with implications for policy or management. Research Policy (RP) is a multidisciplinary journal focused on analyzing, understanding, and effectively addressing the challenges posed by innovation, technology, R&D, and science. This includes activities related to knowledge creation, diffusion, acquisition, and exploitation in the form of new or improved products, processes, or services, across economic, policy, management, organizational, and environmental dimensions.