Office of the Chief Economist (OCE) economists and their collaborators conduct a variety of policy relevant research and make their preliminary findings available as working papers and book chapters.
Identifying Inventors, Applicants, and Assignees from USPTO XML Data
Gerard Torres and Alexander V. Giczy
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2025-1
January 2025
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Identifying inventors, applicants, and assignees on published pre-grant patent applications and granted patents in the extensible markup language (XML) data provided by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Bulk Data Storage System is complicated due to changes necessitated by the America Invents Act of 2011. PatentsView corrects common mistakes that occur when parsing this XML data to categorize individuals and organizations as either inventors, applicants, or assignees. By applying simple guidelines as well as an understanding of the changes from the America Invents Act, PatentsView is able to provide users with more accurate bibliographic patent data for their analysis.
On your marks! Trademark races and their impact on product introductions
Carsten Fink, Christian Helmers, Julian Kolev and Andrew A. Toole
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2024-6
December 2024
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The supply of competitively-effective trademarks is limited, leading different firms to often attempt to register the same or very similar marks for the same types of products. If two or more firms do so while intending to introduce new products into commerce, the result is a “trademark race,” where priority is determined by the firm that files first. We analyze the impact of such races for trademark protection on product-market outcomes. We show that races are more likely to occur for competitively effective trademarks: those with fewer, shorter, or more-common words; further, firms that successfully obtain such trademarks are more likely to continue using them five years after registration, reflecting higher value. We then identify a sample of races where filing dates are sufficiently close so that applicants are unlikely to be aware of each other's interest in the contested mark, generating quasi-random variation in the assignment of priority. We show that relative to their earlier-filed, race winner counterparts, later-filed applications experience an average of 1.5 years of additional examination pendency, and are 50% less likely to obtain trademark registration. Tracking subsequent applications from the same firm, we also find that race losers exhibit a 20-40% lower hazard rate for introducing any new product in the same product class as the original application. Finally, using a simple counterfactual analysis, we show that a hypothetical market allowing race winners and losers to frictionlessly trade priority could result in a 10% increase in the rate of successfully-registered trademark applications.
Examining U.S. Patent Values: Renewal Choices, Citation Dynamics, and Economic Growth
Ryan Hughes
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2024-5
December 2024
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I use a combination of patent characteristics and patent renewal outcomes to develop individual patent-level estimates for the total lifetime private values of more than 3.3 million United States patents granted between 1983 and 2011. The timing of patent forward citations explains significantly more variation in patent values than simple counts of forward citations and the timing of patent forward citations relates to patent values differently through two distinct channels: a patent’s value or revenue flow at grant time and the rate at which this value flow depreciates. I compute technology-specific average patent values and average depreciation rates and demonstrate that technologies having larger average revenue flows at grant typically experience a higher intensity of creative destruction through faster average depreciation of patent values. I document that my estimated private patent values are broadly consistent with those obtained by other researchers, yet my estimates suggest an even stronger linkage between innovation activity and growth in output and productivity, while being applicable to a more extensive group of patents and suggesting a positive relationship between new technology shocks and employment.
Untapped Potential: Investigating Gender Disparities in Patent Citations
Gauri Subramani and Michelle Saksena
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2024-3
July 2024
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The contribution of startups, venture finance, and patenting to innovation in U.S. agriculture
Gregory D. Graff, Charles deGrazia, and Nicholas Rada
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2024-2
July 2024
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Technical Documentation for Patent Litigation Docket Reports Data, 1963-2020
Andrew A. Toole, Richard Miller and Ted M. Sichelman
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2024-1
March 2024
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Competitive Dynamism in Nascent Markets: Trademarks and Superstar Firm Entry in the Metaverse
Wendy A. Bradley and Julian Kolev
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2023-1
September 2023
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Closing the Gender Gap in Patenting: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial at the USPTO
Nicholas A. Pairolero, Andrew A. Toole, Peter-Anthony Pappas, Charles deGrazia and Mike Teodorescu
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2022-1
November 2022
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Immunity to the COVID-19 shock? The case of US innovation, resilience and ingenuity: Global innovation responses to Covid-19
Walter G. Park, Andrew A. Toole, Gerard Torres and Richard D. Miller
Resilience and Ingenuity: Global Innovation Responses to Covid-19
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The Miner Act of 2006: Innovating for Safety and Health in U.S. Mining
Andrew A. Toole, James Forman, and Asrat Tesfayesus
Global Challenges for Innovation in Mining Industries
April 2022
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Using Intellectual Property Data to Measure Cross-Border Knowledge Flows
Jake Dubbert, Alexander V. Giczy, Nicholas A. Pairolero, and Andrew A. Toole
Trade in knowledge: Intellectual property, trade and development in a transformed global economy
February 2022
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Technical Documentation for Matching Patents and Trademarks to the 2017 National Establishment Time Series Database
Ryan Hughes, Charles deGrazia, and Julian Kolev
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2021-4
September 2021
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Software Piracy and IP Management Practices: Strategic Responses to Product-Market Imitation
Wendy A. Bradley and Julian Kolev
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2021-3
August 2021
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Identifying artificial intelligence (AI) invention: A novel AI patent dataset
Alexander V. Giczy, Nicholas A. Pairolero, and Andrew Toole
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2021-2
June 2021
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PatentsView: An open data platform to advance science and technology policy
Andrew Toole, Christina Jones, and Sarvothaman Madhavan
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2021-1
June 2021
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Technical Documentation for the 2019 Patent Examination Research Dataset (Patex) Release
Richard Miller
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2020-4
August 2020
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U.S. Intellectual Property and Counterfeit Goods—Landscape Review of Existing/Emerging Research
Vega Bharadwaj, Marieke Brock, Bridey Heing, Ramon Miron, and Noor Mukarram
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2020-3
April 2020
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Piracy Landscape Study: Analysis of Existing and Emerging Research Relevant to Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Enforcement of Commercial-Scale Piracy
Brett Danaher, Michael D. Smith, and Rahul Telang
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2020-2
April 2020
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The Promise of Machine Learning for Patent Landscaping
Andrew A. Toole, Nicholas Pairolero, James Forman, and Alexander V. Giczy
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2020-1
March 2020
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Previous working papers
2017-2019
USPTO Patent Number and Case Code File Dataset Documentation
David L. Schwartz, Ted M. Sichelman, and Richard Miller
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2019-5
December 2019
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Innovation Activities and Business Cycles: Are Trademarks a Leading Indicator?
Charles A.W. deGrazia, Amanda Myers, and Andrew Toole
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2019-4
June 2019
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Shorter Patent Pendency Without Sacrificing Quality: The Use of Examiner's Amendments at the USPTO
Charles A.W. deGrazia, Nicholas A. Pairolero, and Mike H.M. Teodorescu
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2019-3
June 2019
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Using Intellectual Property Data to Measure Cross-border Knowledge Flows
Jake Dubbert, Alexander V. Giczy, Nicholas A. Pairolero, and Andrew A. Toole
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2019-2
March 2019
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The Miner Act of 2006: Innovating for Safety and Health in U.S. Mining
Andrew A. Toole, James Forman, and Asrat Tesfayesus
USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2019-1
January 2019
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An Anatomy of U.S. Firms Seeking Trademark Registration
Emin M. Dinlersoz, Nathan Goldschlag, Amanda Myers, and Nikolas Zolas
May 2018
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Embracing Invention Similarity for the Measurement of Vertically Overlapping Claims
Charles deGrazia, Jesse Frumkin, and Nicholas Pairolero
April 2018
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USPTO Patent Prosecution Research Data: Unlocking Office Action Traits
Qiang Lu, Amanda F. Myers, and Scott Beliveau
August 2017
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USPTO Patent Prosecution and Examiner Performance Appraisal
Alan C. Marco, Andrew A. Toole, Richard Miller, and Jesse Frumkin
June 2017
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Patent Examination Quality and Litigation: Is There a Link?
Alan C. Marco and Richard Miller
June 2017
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Individual versus Institutional Ownership of University-Discovered Inventions
Dirk Czarnitzki, Thorsten Doherr, Katrin Hussinger, Paula Schliessler, and Andrew A. Toole
June 2017
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Patent Litigation Data from US District Court Electronic Records (1963-2015)
Alan C. Marco, Asrat Tesfayesus, and Andrew A. Toole
March 2017
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The Law and Economics of Concealing Health and Safety Information
Daniel E. Ingberman and Asrat Tesfayesus
January 2017
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2013-2016
Patent Claims and Patent Scope
Alan C. Marco, Joshua D. Sarnoff, and Charles deGrazia
October 2016
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Liberalization Agreements in the GATT/WTO and the Terms-of-trade Externality Theory: Evidence from Three Developing Countries
Asrat Tesfayesus
June 2016
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Knowledge Creates Markets: The Influence of Entrepreneurial Support and Patent Rights on Academic Entrepreneurship
Dirk Czarnitzki, Thorsten Doherr, Katrin Hussinger, Paula Schliessler, and Andrew A. Toole
April 2016
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The Dynamic Relationship between Investments in Brand Equity and Firm Profitability: Evidence using Trademark Registrations
Dirk Crass, Dirk Czarnitzki, and Andrew A. Toole
January 2016
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The Bright Side of Patents
Joan Farre-Mensa, Deepak Hegde, and Alexander Ljungqvist
December 2015
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The USPTO Patent Examination Research Dataset: A Window on the Process of Patent Examination
Stuart Graham, Alan C. Marco, and Richard Miller
November 2015
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Business Dynamics of Innovating Firms: Linking U.S. Patents with Administrative Data on Workers and Firms
Stuart Graham, Cheryl Grim, Tariqul Islam, Alan C. Marco, and Javier Miranda
July 2015
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The USPTO Patent Assignment Dataset: Descriptions and Analysis
Alan Marco, Stuart Graham, Amanda F. Myers, Paul D’Agostino, and Kirsten Apple
June 2015
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The USPTO Historical Patent Data Files: Two Centuries of Innovation
Alan Marco, Michael Carley, Steven Jackson, and Amanda F. Myers
June 2015
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The USPTO Trademark Assignment Dataset: Descriptions and Insights
Stuart Graham, Alan Marco, Amanda F. Myers, and Kirsten Apple
April 2014
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Perspectives on the growth in Chinese patent applications to the USPTO
Alan Marco, Richard Miller and Jay Kesan
February 2014
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What is the Probability of Receiving a US Patent?
Michael Carley, Deepak Hegde and Alan Marco
December 2013
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What is behind the growth in trademark filings? An analysis of United States data
Amanda F. Myers
October 2013
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