US Patent And Trademark Office Research Articles

Analyzing Status Quo of Technology Fusion by Using Patents: A Global and Technical Assessment

Technology fusion is seen as an important driver of emerging industries and economic growth, creating opportunities for enterprises and societies around the world. Yet, asymmetric technological development in different countries or industries leads to disparities in technology fusion, so it is always an issue for policy-makers and scholars to identify and discover the frontier areas where technologies intersect. The objective of this article is to analyze the overall picture of global technology fusion and to explore the differences between fusion and nonfusion technologies through patents. This study utilized patents issued from 1976 to 2017 in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database to analyze technology distances through interdisciplinary patent citations for examining a global picture of technology fusion. Both fusion patents and nonfusion patents are characterized by analysis of variance (ANOVA) and logistic regression based on a total of 20 patent indicators, to differentiate the two types of patents and the likelihood for nonfusion patents to become fusion patents. It is found that most characteristics of fusion patents and nonfusion patents are significantly different. Meanwhile, the novelty of industry knowledge, the richness of knowledge resources, and other conditions increase the likelihood of nonfusion technology becoming fusion technology. Findings of this study provide guidance for potential interdisciplinary innovation through patented technologies.

Geographic distance and innovation: The impact of distant knowledge acquired on patent value

Measuring the value of inventions in the intellectual property landscape is a complex challenge. Experts rely on patent valuation techniques that use resources like the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). This study contributes to patent value research by examining the relationship between the geographic distance among collaborating inventors and patent value indicators. Scholars have suggested that the value of an invention increases as the geographic distance between co-inventors grows. To test this proposition, the study conducted a regression analysis on a dataset of over two million USPTO patents. The analysis controlled for patent and inventor characteristics and consistently found a positive influence of geographic distance on patent value. These findings challenge assumptions and offer insights into collaborative innovation dynamics. They have significant implications for innovation management, urging inventors and organizations to carefully consider spatial factors and recognize the advantages of extended geographic distances when forming collaboration networks. By strategically selecting partners, inventors can optimize patent value, foster innovation, and navigate the evolving intellectual property landscape effectively.

Noticing Patents

Patents take the form of public letters that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) actively disseminates. Whether these documents sufficiently provide the public with notice of the technologies they describe, as well as the proprietary rights that they assert, has been subject to long-standing debate. Many commentators conclude that patents are often filed too early in the research and development cycle, are deliberately drafted in a vague or obtuse manner, or are simply too numerous. As a result, identifying the relevant patent landscape is not just difficult for technology implementers, but possibly undesirable as a matter of innovation policy. Yet prior scholarship has seldom acknowledged current statutory mechanisms to improve the notice function of patents after they issue. This Article endeavors to fill that gap.
 Congress has long encouraged intellectual property rights holders to identify their patents on the products they sell. Patent marking has traditionally occurred on physical products or their packaging, although it has been recently extended to Internet-based virtual marking. The marking statute stipulates that patent proprietors that fail to mark face severe remedial restrictions when challenging infringers. Congress has assigned the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) a part in providing patent notice as well. In keeping with federal legislation, the agency maintains two publications, commonly known as the Orange and Purple Books, that act as a patent clearinghouse for approved drugs and licensed biologics.
 The role of a patent within the marketplace provides perhaps the most valuable form of notice that that instrument may offer. Yet the marking statute and FDA publications suffer from some apparent flaws. In combination they project a failure to identify all patents that are relevant to the product, favor patent trolls, involve dubious practical workings, promote misleading advertising, and impose punitive sanctions in comparison to the notice requirements of peer intellectual property rights. For its part, the FDA has proven an untutored and unreliable patent publicist for the past four decades.
 This Article offers specific suggestions to improve the notice functions of patents after they issue. It calls for the USPTO to develop and populate its own virtual marking database that correlates individual patents with the marketplace. It also encourages the FDA to take further steps to counter abuses of the Orange and Purple Books and to accelerate their patent notice functions. Finally, this Article takes broader lessons from this effort, offering pathways for policymakers to look beyond the patent instrument as they endeavor to improve the patent system’s notice functions.

AiZynthTrain: Robust, Reproducible, and Extensible Pipelines for Training Synthesis Prediction Models.

We introduce the AiZynthTrain Python package for training synthesis models in a robust, reproducible, and extensible way. It contains two pipelines that create a template-based one-step retrosynthesis model and a RingBreaker model that can be straightforwardly integrated in retrosynthesis software. We train such models on the publicly available reaction data set from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and these are the first retrosynthesis models created in a completely reproducible end-to-end fashion, starting with the original reaction data source and ending with trained machine-learning models. In particular, we show that employing new heuristics implemented in the pipeline greatly improves the ability of the RingBreaker model for disconnecting ring systems. Furthermore, we demonstrate the robustness of the pipeline by training on a more diverse but proprietary data set. We envisage that this framework will be extended with other synthesis models in the future.

Disruptive innovation and spatial inequality

ABSTRACT Although technological change is widely credited as driving the last 200 years of economic growth, its role in shaping patterns of inequality remains under-explored. Drawing parallels across two industrial revolutions in the United States, this paper provides new evidence of a relationship between highly disruptive forms of innovation and spatial inequality. Using the universe of patents granted between 1920 and 2010 by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), we identify disruptive innovations through their rapid growth, complementarity with other innovations and widespread use. We then assign more and less disruptive innovations to subnational regions in the geography of the United States. We document three findings that are new to the literature. First, disruptive innovations exhibit distinctive spatial clustering in phases understood to be those in which industrial revolutions reshape the economy; they are increasingly dispersed in other periods. Second, we discover that the ranks of locations that capture the most disruptive innovation are relatively unstable across industrial revolutions. Third, regression estimates suggest a role for disruptive innovation in regulating overall patterns of spatial output and income inequality.

Close together or far apart? The geography of host-country knowledge sourcing and MNCs’ innovation performance

ABSTRACT We investigate the influence of different host-country knowledge sources on the quality and generality of multinational corporation (MNC) innovation. We suggest that the quality of MNC innovation increases with the geographical distance from local industrial organizations. We also argue that the generality of MNC innovation increases with the distance from local research institutions, but decreases after a certain threshold. We explain these relationships based on the different cognitive and geographical distances separating MNC innovation activities from industrial organizations and research institutions. We test our arguments on a sample of US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patents developed in the United States by foreign semiconductor MNCs.

Intellectual property and artificial intelligence: who is the author?

The economic and legal aspects of the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, their influence on scientific and inventive activity are studied. The role of protection of intellectual property (IP) - (patent and copyright) in different economies and jurisdictions in ensuring the balance of competing interests, identifies existing problems and identifies ways to solve them. AI is seen as one of the most important dual-use technologies, a new challenge for the economy and the legal system, a new phenomenon that has a multiplier effect, a legal phenomenon in the structure of legal relations, a new object for legal regulation. AI is able to generate and create various works - science, literature and art. These circumstances raise problems of recognition of authorship, the possibility of authors to dispose of their rights and their use of mechanisms for legal protection of IP objects. The main provisions of the Resolution of the European Parliament of October 20, 2020 on intellectual property rights in the development of artificial intelligence technologies (2020/2015 (INI)), the Resolution of the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI) 2020 on the inventory of inventions using AI. The analysis of the legislative and law enforcement practice of the European Patent Office (EPO), the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO), regional and international documents on the regulation of AI and IP, provides an opportunity to form a unified approach to interpretation of the criteria of protection of the results of AI activities in different jurisdictions, to apply the mechanisms of legal protection of IP objects in the national legislation, emphasizes the importance of IP policy for national security

The Hidden Costs of Securing Innovation: The Manifold Impacts of Compulsory Invention Secrecy

One of the most commanding powers of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is to compel inventions into secrecy, withholding patent rights and prohibiting disclosure, to prevent technology from leaking to foreign competitors. This paper studies the impacts of compulsory secrecy on firm invention and the wider innovation system. In World War II, USPTO issued secrecy orders to more than 11,000 patent applications, which it rescinded en masse at the end of the war. Compulsory secrecy caused implicated firms to shift their patenting away from treated classes, with effects persisting through at least 1960. It also restricted commercialization and impeded follow-on innovation. Yet it appears it was effective at keeping sensitive technology out of public view. The results provide insight into the effectiveness of compulsory secrecy as a regulatory strategy and into the roles, and impacts, of formal intellectual property in the innovation system. This paper was accepted by Toby Stuart, entrepreneurship and innovation. Funding: This work was supported by Harvard Business School (Division of Research and Faculty Development) and the National Bureau of Economic Research (Innovation Policy Grant). This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation [Grant 1951470]. Supplemental Material: Data and the online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4457 .

Increasing diversity in inventorship and innovation

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields lag behind the total US workforce in terms of gender, racial, and ethnic diversity, something the American Chemical Society aims to address through goal 5 of its strategic plan. Many people have assumed that the lack of diversity among inventors was related to this underrepresentation. Until recent years, such assumptions could not be validated because patent offices did not collect demographic information from inventors. However, the World Intellectual Property Organization and the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) investigated the percentage of women inventors among all inventors using a name-based attribution algorithm and found that the percentage of women inventors is substantially lower than women’s education and employment as scientists and engineers. The USPTO reports that within chemistry-related patents, women made up approximately 18% of inventors from 2007 to 2016. While an increase in the pipeline of women scientists and engineers can enable excellence,

Review of patented hybrid powertrain technologies for commercial vehicles in the USA

In the automotive industry, hybridisation is a growing indispensable technology to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions for passenger cars and other light-duty vehicles. However, from the perspective of the commercial vehicles, the hybrid technology achieves a very limited success only in some niche applications such as buses and delivery trucks, even though for decades hybrid powertrains have been developed relentlessly for commercial vehicles. Looking into 2024 and beyond, the GHG and emission regulation will become stricter. Now it is a right time to re-visit those patented hybrid technologies dedicated for medium- and heavy-duty (MHD) trucks. This paper intends to survey those patents approved in US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The review can help interested parties to better understand the status quo of the hybrid technologies for commercial vehicles as well as the trend for the coming decade.

Amendments at Indian National Phase: In Harmony with PCT Standards?

The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) under Article 28 / Rule 52 or Article 41 / Rule 78 guarantees the applicant the right to amend claims, description and drawings before each designated/elected office, on national phase entry or at least one month thereafter, further to the amendments submitted during the International phase of the application. The Indian Patent Office (IPO) however refuses to allow amendments while entering the national phase,1 except for deletion2 of one or more claims under Rule 20(1)3 of the Patent Rules 2003. The Patent Offices of other PCT signatories like the European Patent Office(EPO), the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS)4, the Chinese Patent Office (CNIPA) and the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (INPI)allow this amendment under Article 28/Article 41 PCT. The IPO accepts all other types of amendments such as merging of two or more claims, alteration of the claim language, etc. only during the national phase proceedings. These amendments can be made either through a request for voluntary amendments in Form 13 along with payment of the associated fee, or in response to the examination report. The latter requires, the applicant to wait until the examination report is communicated. In this article, we are attempting to analyze whether India is in line with the above mentioned provisions of PCT in respect of providing the applicants an opportunity to amend the claims further from that on file in the international phase, at the time of filing the national phase application.

Ubiquitous technologies and 5G development. Who is leading the race?

The introduction of the fifth generation of mobile technology (5G) is expected to bring disruptive changes. These changes will be much more pervasive than any previous introduction of new mobile ‘generations’ and they are expected to influence the whole economy. For this reason, the global rush for 5G technology is not only considered crucial in economic or technological terms, but also for its implications in terms of geopolitics, international policy and national security.This paper presents an analysis of the patents in the most relevant fields of specialization connected to the 5G development. The period under investigation is from 2010 to 2019, and the data are extracted from the European Patent Office (EPO) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database. The analysis shows how the technologies and the specialisations needed to develop 5G are in the hands of a few countries around the globe, and how single European countries, taken in isolation, are not among those leading players. However, Europe, considered as a whole, competes well with the US and Asia in terms of patented innovations, suggesting the economic and strategic relevance of strengthening cooperation within the EU.

Overqualified and Under-Represented: Gender Inequality in the Pharmaceutical Patent Field

Pharmaceutical patents represent some of the most valuable intellectual property assets for drug companies. These patents can be worth billions of dollars if found valid and infringed. Correspondingly, if invalidated, generic drug manufacturers can get to market earlier, generating billions of dollars of added revenue. Accordingly, drug patents are associated with high-value, high-cost, bet-the-company type prosecution and litigation. Women, however, are noticeably absent from pharmaceutical patent practice. Women represent only 30% of pharmaceutical patent litigators, and only 33% of pharmaceutical patent prosecutors. Some commentators argue that this lack of representation is due to a “pipeline” problem: we don’t see. women in STEM-focused legal careers because women are underrepresented in STEM undergraduate and graduate programs. Proponents of the pipeline argument contend that the solution to gender and racial homogeneity in patent practice is to simply graduate more women from STEM programs or to adopt more flexible requirements for entering patent practice. This study focuses on pharmaceutical patent litigation from 2009-2021. Specifically, this study reviews: (1) the patent prosecutors who obtained these valuable drug patents; (2) the USPTO patent examiners who reviewed these patents; and (3) both the generic and brand pharmaceutical patent litigators. We find significant gender disparities in the private sector lawyers at both the prosecution and litigation levels. The empirical study presented in this article refutes the pipeline argument when it comes to women in pharmaceutical patent prosecution and litigation. It shows that, for over a decade, women have consistently obtained undergraduate, masters, and doctorate degrees in the biological sciences at higher rates than men for over a decade.6 Furthermore, the study finds that women make up over two-thirds of law students with a health professions degree and over half with a natural sciences degree. Yet, despite having more education in the sciences, women are still underrepresented in private sector pharmaceutical patent prosecution and pharmaceutical litigation. Interestingly, however, this gender disparity does not carry over to public sector work in patent law. The study finds the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is the one place where we see near parity between men and women in the pharmaceutical patent field: 45% women versus 55% men. Women at the USPTO Solicitor’s Office argue about the same number of cases at the Federal Circuit. Further, women make up nearly half of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Finally, unlike the private sector, women at the USPTO are paid at the same rate and stay for the same amount of time as their male counterparts at the USPTO. Drug companies and law firms all state that diversity is an important aspect of their business models. But, as this study shows, there is a disconnect between rhetoric and action. The problem does not seem to stem from a lack of education or a lack of participation in the legal system. The problem may be a lack of opportunity given to women to participate in this type of valuable litigation. The solution may have to come from within the industry, specifically those who have control over hiring outside counsel. Law firm clients may have to use the power of the purse to help encourage greater diversity.

Examination incentives, learning, and patent office outcomes: The use of examiner’s amendments at the USPTO

We investigate how U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent examiner experience and seniority-based incentives affect the innovation ecosystem. First, we show that examiners respond to production incentives and demonstrate learning by increasing the use of examiner’s amendments in both experience and seniority, a mechanism not previously studied. Second, this examination procedure directly benefits innovators and firms by significantly reducing prosecution processing time without impacting patent quality. Finally, after considering examiner’s amendments, the negative relationship between examiner characteristics and patent examination quality found in the previous literature does not persist at first action, a decision point that allows for the clear measurement of examiner behavior. Our results demonstrate a need for reformulated policy recommendations related to the structure of examination at the USPTO.

Pictures Worth A Thousand Words? AI for Design Patents

Patent examination process is crucial for firms and policymakers alike. From a firm's perspective, the duration of patent examination process and grant decision carries important strategic, legal, and financial implications. At the same time, policymakers are interested to optimize the allocation of scarce examination resources and improve the reliability of patent grant assignments. I propose using Image Analysis to enhance and standardize patent examination procedure. Using granted design patents for mobile phones issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) from 1990-2018 as an exemplary case, I extract prior art contribution measures and develop an algorithm to assign new design patents. Results show that contrary to prior research on technological patents, text-based similarity and novelty measures do not perform well in the case of design patents. Next, results suggest that a high level of prior art contribution would have a shorter patent examination process. Lastly, evidence exhibits that the trained neural network has a 94 percent accuracy rate in automatically classifying new patent designs. I draw policy and managerial implications.

Selected Developments in Biotechnology Law and the Biotechnology Industry

Selected Developments in Biotechnology Law and the Biotechnology Industry

Сombating unfair registrations and using means of individualization in the conditions of digital transformation

Key words: intellectual property, unfair competition, means of individualization, valuation,squatter, losses, digital transformation, artificial intelligence
 The article examines the economic, legal and institutional aspects of combating unfair registration and use ofmeans of individualization (trademarks, brand names, geographical indications, domainnames) in the context of digital transformation. The formation of theoretical and methodologicaland methodological foundations for the protection of the rights of their owners,improving the efficiency of experts of intellectual property agencies, law enforcementagencies, tools for digital search and use of artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure the effectivenessof the institution of individualization. The economic and legal aspects of foreign(in the jurisdictions of China, USA, EU) and domestic legislative and law enforcementpractices to combat the phenomenon of unfair registration and use of personalization,digital search tools and the use of AI are analyzed. It is shown that over the next fiveyears, 30 to 50% of product searches will be by voice rather than text, so the impact of AIon the way a product is purchased will have significant economic and legal implicationsfor individualization legislation. The means of counteracting unscrupulous applicants inthe USA have been studied. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has developedrules under which foreign applicants and trademark owners must be representedby a U.S. licensed attorney when filing trademark applications with the USPTO. Emphasisis placed on the introduction of legislative liability of e-commerce platforms forcounterfeit goods. The analysis of the last changes in the legislation of Ukraine on protectionof trade marks is carried out. It is shown that the new rules change the approachesto registration and protection of trademarks, create the possibility of their fair use.Digitalization, transition to e-document circulation in the Customs Register, improvementof the procedure for destruction of counterfeit goods are important anti-corruptionsteps in the activities of Ukrainian customs in the context of digital transformation of theeconomy.

Сombating unfair registrations and using means of individualization in the conditions of digital transformation

Key words: intellectual property, unfair competition, means of individualization, valuation,squatter, losses, digital transformation, artificial intelligence
 The article examines the economic, legal and institutional aspects of combating unfair registration and useof means of individualization (trademarks, brand names, geographical indications,domain names) in the context of digital transformation. The formation of theoreticaland methodological and methodological foundations for the protection of the rights oftheir owners, improving the efficiency of experts of intellectual property agencies, lawenforcement agencies, tools for digital search and use of artificial intelligence (AI) toensure the effectiveness of the institution of individualization. The economic and legalaspects of foreign (in the jurisdictions of China, USA, EU) and domestic legislativeand law enforcement practices to combat the phenomenon of unfair registration anduse of personalization, digital search tools and the use of AI are analyzed. It is shownthat over the next five years, 30 to 50% of product searches will be by voice ratherthan text, so the impact of AI on the way a product is purchased will have significanteconomic and legal implications for individualization legislation. The means of counteractingunscrupulous applicants in the USA have been studied. The U.S. Patentand Trademark Office (USPTO) has developed rules under which foreign applicantsand trademark owners must be represented by a U.S. licensed attorney when filingtrademark applications with the USPTO. Emphasis is placed on the introduction oflegislative liability of e-commerce platforms for counterfeit goods. The analysis of thelast changes in the legislation of Ukraine on protection of trade marks is carried out.It is shown that the new rules change the approaches to registration and protection oftrademarks, create the possibility of their fair use. Digitalization, transition to e-documentcirculation in the Customs Register, improvement of the procedure for destructionof counterfeit goods are important anti-corruption steps in the activities ofUkrainian customs in the context of digital transformation of the economy.

The EPO Guidelines They Are a-Changin’

The EPO Guidelines They Are a-Changin’

The Influence of Alice

The Supreme Court’s decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank has had a decimating influence on patents and patent applications. Its long shadow looms over every stage of a patent’s life cycle — from prosecution to litigation and the administrative post-grant process at the patent office. In their article, Professor Jay Kesan and Dr. Runhua Wang offer a penetrating look at Alice’s influence on software, business methods and bioinformatics, all key technologies powering our modern economy. This Response sets out the relevant law on patent eligibility, contextualizes the Authors’ key findings on bioinformatics applications against that legal framework, and considers whether Congress, the courts, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) can be agents of change to alleviate Alice’s baleful influence on patent law.