Crafting Intellectual Property Rights: Implications for Patent Assertion Entities, Litigation, and Innovation
研究发现审查员导致的专利权利差异显著影响专利价值、引用和诉讼，专利主张实体（PAEs）倾向于购买宽松审查员授予的专利，这些专利更易被诉讼且无效率更高，挑战了专利局“理性无知”的观点。
We show that examiner-driven variation in patent rights leads to quantitatively large impacts on several patent outcomes, including patent value, citations, and litigation. Notably, Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs) overwhelmingly purchase patents granted by “lenient” examiners. These examiners issue patents that are more likely to be litigated by both PAEs and conventional companies, and that also have higher invalidity rates. PAEs leverage a specific friction in the patent system that stems from lenient examiners and affects litigation more broadly. These patterns indicate that there is much at stake during patent examination, contradicting the influential “rational ignorance” view of the patent office.