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17 Yale J.L. & Tech. 203 (2015)
What Is the Probability of Receiving a U.S. Patent

handle is hein.journals/yjolt17 and id is 205 raw text is: WHAT IS THE PROBABILITY OF RECEIVING A U.S. PATENT? Michael Carley, Deepak Hegde, and Alan Marco' 17 YALE J.L. & TECH. 203 (2015) ABSTRACT What proportion of patent applications filed at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) are eventually granted? Many experts have suggested that the USPTO approves nearly all applications, blaming this apparent leniency for many problems with the U.S. patent system. To test this assumption, we follow the prosecution histories of 2.15 million U.S. patent applications from 1996 to mid-2013. We find that only 55.8% of the applications emerged as patents without using continuation procedures to create related applications. The allowance rate has decreased substantially over time, particularly for applications in the Drugs and Medical Instruments and Computers and Communications fields. Furthermore, applications filed by small firms were less likely to emerge as patents than those filed by large firms. We discuss the implications of our findings for inventors, policymakers, and legal scholars. TABLE OF CONTENTS In trodu ction ........................................................................................ 2 04 I. D ata and M ethodology ............................................................... 206 II. Patent Examination in the United States ................................ 207 A. The Exam ination Process .................................................. 207 B. Continuation Procedures ................................................... 209 III. Allowance Rates Across Technology Fields .............................. 212 IV. Allowance Rates Across Inventor Types ................................... 213 V . C on clu sion .................................................................................. 2 15 A p p en d ix ............................................................................................. 2 17 The authors thank Wesley Cohen, Paul D'Agostino, Charles Eloshway, Kira Fabrizio, Dan Hunter, Jenny Kuan, Joanne Oxley, Gregory Mills, Cecil Quillen, Binta Robinson, Patrick Ross, Robert Seamans, and Arvids Ziedonis for helpful discussions and suggestions. Alan Marco is the Chief Economist at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Michael Carley is a Senior Data Analyst at T- Mobile, and Deepak Hegde is an Assistant Professor at New York University and Thomas Alva Edison Research Fellow at the USPTO. Hegde's research was funded by the 2012-2013 Kauffman Faculty Fellowship. The analysis and recommendations in this manuscript, however, are solely the authors' and do not necessarily reflect the views of either the USPTO or the Kauffman Foundation.

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