In June of 2015, Juristat published its first white paper studying the effect patent analytics had on our customers’ allowance rates, among other metrics. To do this, we separated all of our customers’ applications into two groups. The first consisted of applications where the prosecuting attorney had purchased and used a Juristat Examiner Report or other analytic ("Juristat applications"). The second group consisted of applications prosecuted at the same time by the same firms, but where the prosecuting attorney did not use a Juristat analytic ("non-Juristat applications"). 

Introduction

If you’re reading this, you’re already familiar with Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank or you’re my mother. Either way, it’s unnecessary to recite all the details of the case or the subsequent aftermath. Suffice it to say that Alice created some serious doubts about the patentability of software claims, particularly as they relate to business methods.

For the third and final entry in our series of studies on appeals data at the USPTO, we will now take a look at the examiner level, studying all examiners at the USPTO to uncover those who were appealed the most and least. 

For the second entry in our series of studies on appeals data at the USPTO, we now turn to the art unit level, examining all art units to uncover those where examiners are affirmed the most and reversed the most on appeal. 

An appeal is one of the more costly and time-consuming actions an applicant can take on a patent application. As such, an attorney will want to recommend an appeal only if the client is particularly determined to receive an allowance. However, appeal win rates vary widely among tech centers, art units, and examiners, meaning that it makes sense to undertake an appeal only if there is a good chance it will be successful. 

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.

Integration will let users access examiner statistics from within their favorite management software

As we continue to investigate major rivalries in the patent law world, we now turn our attention away from market-based competition and onto academic competition. This is a type of rivalry that, while generally good-natured, can get quite heated as various schools battle it out in academic rankings, job placement statistics, and on the field. When it comes to academic rivalries in the sector, there is perhaps none more fierce than the one between the two preeminent schools of technology in the United States--MIT and Caltech. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was founded in Cambridge in 1861 to educate students in applied science and engineering in the rapidly-industrializing United States. Widely considered to be among the top technology schools in the world, MIT ranks #7 overall among national universities in the United States according to U.S. News, and #1 for several of its undergraduate and graduate programs, including engineering, chemistry, and mathematics. The school has produced 85 Nobel laureates, 45 Rhodes Scholars, and 34 astronauts.

Juristat is proud to release its ranking of the Top 100 U.S. Patent Firms.  This is the only ranking of U.S. patent prosecution firms that is based on the objective measurement of those firms' performance in front of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Note: This list is from 2016. Click here to see the latest rankings. 

By now, it's pretty clear that we at Juristat love competitions, lists, and ranking things in general.  Because of our penchant for pitting patent-filing companies and firms against each other, we've been hard at work on our biggest ranking yet - the overall Top 100 Patent Law Firms.  This list is the only ranking of U.S. law firms based on those firms' objective performance in front of the USPTO. Due to our barely contained excitement, we've decided to give our blog readers a special sneak peak at the firms rounding out the Juristat Top Twenty! Congratulations to all the top twenty firms!