We are constantly thinking about all the factors that affect a patent application. We’ve even analyzed gender bias at the USPTO (check back soon for those results). Every detail matters, perhaps even the length of an application’s title. That’s why we decided to test the following hypothesis: a longer application title results in a longer wait until first exam.

Here at Juristat, we are often asked whether an entity's size affects its allowance rate for patents. We’ve run the numbers, and the results may be more skewed than you expect.

The USPTO has issued new guidance on subject matter eligibility under § 101. The document, entitled “2014 Interim Guidance on Patent Subject Matter Eligibility” (Interim Eligibility Guidance), comes in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decisions in Mayo, Myriad, and Alice Corp. that have shaken up the way patent examiners determine if an idea is patentable. Prior to the Interim Eligibility Guidance's release on December 15th, patent examiners relied primarily on two documents released earlier this year: (1) the Myriad/Mayo guidance issued on March 4th; and (2) the Alice Corp. guidance issued on June 25th. The new document supplements the latter and supersedes the former.

SAWS. If you think it sounds ominous, you’re not the first. Alyssa Bereznak at Yahoo Tech recently broke the story on this shadowy USPTO system.

Juristat conducted an analysis which reviewed trends in examiner behavior immediately following an interview with the applicant. Specifically, we calculated the percentage of examiner interviews after first rejection that result in NOA with amendment, NOA w/o amendment, rejection, or no decision. What we found is that particular examiners often heavily favor one outcome over another. The data shown in this blog post is the result of analysis across our entire dataset. We do not factor art unit or time periods into our calculations. We only use examiners who are listed on more than 100 applications and who have had at least one application with an examiner interview after first rejection. Therefore, our normalized sample consists of 6556 examiners. From that pool we calculated the following statistics: