Patenting inventions or inventing patents? Continuation practice at the USPTO

Continuations allow inventors to add new claims to old patents, leading to concerns about unintended infringement and holdup. We study how continuations are used in standard essential patent (SEP) prosecution. Difference in differences estimates suggest that continuation filings increase by 80%–121%...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Righi, Cesare, Simcoe, Timothy
Formato: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Recursos:Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Repositorio:Repositorio Digital de la UPF
OAI Identifier:oai:repositori.upf.edu:10230/59231
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/10230/59231
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1756-2171.12446
Access Level:acceso abierto
Descrição
Resumo:Continuations allow inventors to add new claims to old patents, leading to concerns about unintended infringement and holdup. We study how continuations are used in standard essential patent (SEP) prosecution. Difference in differences estimates suggest that continuation filings increase by 80%–121% after a standard is published. This effect is larger for applicants with licensing-based business models and for patent examiners with a higher allowance rate. Claim language is more similar for SEPs filed after standard publication, and late-filing is positively correlated with litigation. These findings suggest widespread use of continuations to draft patents that are infringed by already-published standards.