Partisan Patent Examiners? Exploring the Link Between the Political Ideology of Patent Examiners and Patent Office Outcomes
33 Pages Posted: 29 Jun 2020 Last revised: 28 Feb 2023
Date Written: February 27, 2023
Abstract
Patents are key strategic resources which enable firms to appropriate innovation returns and prevent rival imitation. Patent examiners – individuals who may be subject to various sources of bias – play a central role in determining which inventions are awarded patent rights. Using a novel dataset, we explore if one increasingly prevalent source of bias – political ideology – manifests in examiner decision-making. Reassuringly, our analysis suggests that the political ideology of patent examiners is largely unrelated to patent office outcomes. However, we do find evidence suggesting politically active conservative-leaning examiners are more likely to grant patents relative to politically active liberal-leaning examiners, but only for patent applications where there is ambiguity regarding what constitutes patentable subject matter and hence examiners have greater discretion.
Keywords: Innovation, Patents, Political Ideology, Patent Examiners, Intellectual Property Rights
JEL Classification: O30, O31, O34, O51
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation