As part of our ongoing effort to uncover the firms that perform the best using various key metrics of skill in patent prosecution (allowance rate, speed to disposition, number of claims lost, etc.), we wanted to rank some of the most efficient law firms for patent prosecution. Now, there are several methods for measuring "efficiency" in patent prosecution, the most obvious being average speed to disposition and average number of office actions. We have previously ranked the speediest firms in several technology centers (here, here, and here), but we have not yet ranked firms using average number of office actions as an indicator of overall efficiency. Below are the top 10 firms that receive the fewest office actions. They are ranked by the average number of office actions they received between publication and disposition for all utility patent applications disposed between January 1, 2005 and March 31, 2016. In order to achieve the most accurate sample sizes, we limited the pool of eligible firms to those that had disposed of at least 5,000 applications during the relevant time frame.
Congratulations to the following firms on their remarkable efficiency in patent prosecution.
* A substantial number of attorneys and staff from Novak Druce were recently hired by Polsinelli PC.