Quarterly newsletter from the Office of the Chief Economist, USPTO

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United States Patent and Trademark Office

OFFICE OF THE CHIEF ECONOMIST

Quarterly Newsletter, Spring 2022

Latest updates from the Office of the Chief Economist (OCE):

1 IP ECONOMIC RESEARCH REPORT

Intellectual property and the U.S. economy: Third edition

OCE released an update to the IP and the U.S. economy report. This update builds on the 2012 and 2016 reports that described the importance of IP-intensive industries to the U.S. economy. The report uses more refined data than in previous reports that improved the precision of identifying companies within industries and expanded the scope of industries explored. The report finds, for example, that industries in the United States that intensively use intellectual property (IP) accounted for 41% of domestic economic output in 2019.

For more details, including the supplementary material, and to read the report, visit the IP and the U.S. economy webpage.


2 RESEARCH FINDINGS

Identifying artificial intelligence (AI) invention: a novel AI patent dataset

A recently published article in The Journal of Technology Transfer describes the machine learning methodology used to construct OCE’s AI Patent Dataset (AIPD). Based on several evaluation metrics derived from a manual review by patent examiners with focused expertise in AI, the article shows that OCE’s approach achieves superior performance relative to existing alternatives in the literature.

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

OCE recently published “Examination incentives, learning, and patent office outcomes: The use of examiner’s amendments at the USPTO” in the journal, Research Policy. The article finds that patent examiner’s amendments at the USPTO are increasingly used by more experienced and senior patent examiners to reduce patent prosecution time without lowering patent quality, thereby benefiting inventors and companies.

Software Piracy and IP Management Practices working paper

OCE released a new working paper analyzing the effect of software piracy on companies’ Research & Development (R&D) spending and intellectual property filings. The analysis shows that increased piracy led to higher subsequent rates of copyright, trademark, and patent filings, as well as greater R&D spending. These findings suggest that greater rates of innovation may be an effective response to digital piracy.


3 DATA RESOURCES

Trademark Assignment Dataset update

OCE released the latest update to its Trademark Assignment Dataset. The 2021 update contains detailed information on 1.19 million assignments, involving 2.16 million unique trademark properties, recorded at the USPTO between March 1952 and January 2022.

For more information, visit the Trademark Assignment Dataset webpage.

PatentsView: Updated U.S. patent and pre-grant publication data

PatentsView updated their U.S. patent and pre-grant publication data to extend through September 30, 2021. The PatentsView open data platform performs data preparation, visualization, and adds helpful features to USPTO’s administrative data. PatentsView is fundamentally a free “intermediate good” that provides raw materials for researchers, policymakers, and students to conduct their own analyses, make their own linkages, and derive their own insights.

PatentsView: Annualized Data Files for Patents, Assignees, and Inventor Gender

PatentsView recently released annual datasets for exploring patents and their inventors and companies. The annual datasets are in csv files small enough for users without data science or coding knowledge to manipulate and view information about the inventors and company(ies) associated with every granted patent, including the gender of inventors generated by our gender attribution algorithm. These annual datasets are constructed around patent grant year, and combine corresponding company (assignee) and inventor information for each patent granted between 1976 to 2020. These datasets improve user access to PatentsView data, especially those users interested in women inventors

IPR infringement resource tool update

OCE recently updated the data behind the IPR infringement resource tool. The tool provides access to a library of infringement related information produced by U.S. government agencies. Topics include bilateral and multilateral trade agreements with intellectual property (IP) provisions, and annual (or other periodic) reports produced by federal IP enforcement agencies.


4 NEWS

Chief Economist Speaker Series

OCE hosted Dr. Matt Marx (Cornell University), Dr. Nancy Kong (University of Sydney), and Dr. Gauri Subramani (Lehigh University) for the OCE Chief Economist Speaker Series. More information on the speakers is available on our events page.


Follow the USPTO on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin) for the latest updates. Additional updates are available at www.uspto.gov/economics.

Thank you,
The OCE team

Office of the Chief Economist, Office of Policy and International Affairs
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
Department of Commerce
Phone: 571-272-6900
economics@uspto.gov

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