Are Patent Offices Substitutes
2021
This paper evaluates whether and to what extent patent offices can substitute for each other. Based on an original dataset comprising 7.200 PCT patents filed simultaneously in Japan, the USA and Europe, the empirical analysis confirms that the degree of substitution is significant. Patent offices search up to 37% less technology classes, generate up to 33% less citations, and send up to 43% less communications when a PCT application was previously processed by another office. They also rely more on international citations and provide more information in the early stage of the examination process. Further substitution may still be leveraged, as around 55% of technology classes searched and up to 70% of backward citations are duplicates -voluntarily or not - of prior examination work.
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