Guest Post on Patent Examiners and Labour Markets

Chirantan is interested in exploring the Indian labour market for Indian patent examiners. For those interested, please write to him at chirantan[at]cmu.edu.

How do I know what you know? – Except if I am Einstein…

In a world of dwindling economies, rising impetus for governmental assistance to bail out firms, and protectionist policies to resurrect domestic industries across the globe, one thing is conveniently being put in the backburner for short term firefighting. What will happen to innovation and innovative output? And in that, patent offices, the creation of the WTO-TRIPs agreement signed by many countries, along with the role of patent examiners, could play a critical role. This especially when one looks at events with a calmer mind and assesses that patent examiners in a downturn will have lesser industry options and might have to stay put at national patent office jobs. The issue is finding curious interest especially among some arm chair academicians, if one goes by a recent paper at the International Industrial Organization Conference proceedings of 2009. Investigating mobility and career concerns of patent examiners at the US Patent Office, Canadian economists Corinne Langinier and Stéphanie Lluis use a random sample of 647 patent examiners (who granted patents on Dec 19th, 1995 at the US Patent Office) to offer some interesting preliminary results.

Using measures such as experience (number of years an examiner spends as a primary examiner), talent (number of years as assistant examiner and number of patents per year as assistant examiner), and effort (number of patents per year as a primary examiner) the authors show that experience always decreases the likelihood of promotion or change of task. Therefore, the longer the examiner has stayed at the USPTO the less likely he is going to change of task (e.g., administrators, or work at the board of appeal). Effort and talent, influences differently the mobility outcome.

Talent as being the tenure as assistant examiner has a significant and strong effect on promotion within the organization. The shorter time an examiner spends as assistant the more likely he is promoted. Talent however measured as number of patents per year as assistant has a significant but small effect on the outcome. The more patents are granted as assistant, the more likely the examiner leaves. In other words a more prolific examiner can be envisaged to leave the US Patent office sooner than somebody slower, to pursue alternative career options perhaps in the industry.

But would that truism hold across all sectors and more so in an economy which has recently undergone patent reforms in a world of recessionary pressures. One cannot be sure without undertaking for example a detailed study of examiner background, recruiting trends, wages, alternative career options etc for a new created patent office like one in India – after the 2005 patent reforms. And all of the above could further be analyzed in a systematic manner by looking at before and after 2005 trends of institutions supplying patent examiners, tracking their opportunity costs of being an examiner (leaving a private sector job for example), and biases if any by industrial sectors where one wants to be recruited (pharmaceuticals and hi-tech could get higher number of applications than others after 2005). It is not easy to know as a patent examiner what you and me might know as the inventor of a patent (except if I am an Einstein), and this career option deserves a systematic investigation especially in an emerging economy with a reformed patent system as in India – any takers?

For two other papers on patent examiners, check:

1. Alcacer and Gittelman (2003, 2004), where authors report that patent examiners add 40 per cent of all citations and two-thirds of citations on the average patent are inserted by examiners.
2. Also see an interesting report by Sampat (2004) and check out the conclusions in page 33-35 of the paper.