We follow the prosecution histories of the 2.15 million new patent applications filed at the US Patent and Trademark Office between 1996 and 2005 to calculate patent allowance rates. 55.8% of the applications emerged as patents without using continuation procedures to spawn related applications....

Patent classification systems are largely designed for administrative purposes, limiting their value for most research purposes. To address this deficiency, Hall, Jaffe, and Trajtenberg (2001) developed a higher-level classification for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Patent...

Patent classification systems are largely designed for administrative purposes, limiting their value for most research purposes. To address this deficiency, Hall, Jaffe, and Trajtenberg (2001) developed a higher-level classification for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Patent...

The report offers both a new and comparative methodology for measuring backlogs and pendency, as well as empirical findings on the relationship between application stocks and examination pendency in the UK and the US. Understanding these relationships is critical for better evidence based policy...

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,...