Getting Patents: Does the Quality of Patent Attorney Matter?

Abstract

The patent system underpins the business model of some of the fastest-growing companies. Used appropriately, it should support frontier technologies and nurture new firms. Used perniciously, it can stifle innovation and protect established technological behemoths. We analyze patent examination decisions at the American, European, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese patent offices and find evidence that patent attorney firms have a surprisingly significant role in the patent system. Our results suggest that some forces within the examination system maintain the uneven playing field by allocating monopoly rights to inventors with better access to influential attorney firms, rather than levelling it by favoring inventors with more inventive, non-obvious ideas. Attorney firm quality is most important, vis-a-vis invention quality, in less codified and more rapidly changing technology areas such as software and ICT. Moreover, attorney firm quality is more important when invention quality is low. Finally, there is a significant inter-patent office variation with a more dominant attorney firm quality effect at the American patent office.