Examiner Characteristics and Patent Office Outcomes
研究发现美国专利商标局中经验更丰富的审查员引用更少现有技术、更易批准专利且无驳回，表明专利审查结果受审查员分配偶然性影响，人力资源政策是专利改革中被忽视的杠杆。
In this paper, we show that there are important differences across patent examiners at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. We show that more experienced examiners cite less prior art, are more likely to grant patents, and are more likely to grant patents without any rejections. These results suggest that the most important decisions made by the patent office are significantly affected by the happenstance of which examiner gets an application. They also point to human resource policies as potentially important levers, hitherto neglected, in patent system reform. © 2012 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.