As I mentioned in a previous blog post, different aspects of patent quality are affected by different actors in the patent system. Improving patent quality requires careful examination of the various policy levers available to different actors. For instance, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is bound by the statutes set forth by Congress. […]
Patent Quality
Exploring the Policy Levers that Impact Patent Quality
During my tenure at the US Patent and Trademark Office, the agency engaged in its Enhanced Patent Quality Initiative. To effectively improve patent quality, it was important to understand the various policy “levers” that might influence quality (and of course to understand what we mean by quality, as I discussed here). What levers are available […]
Patent Quality in Chicago – Companies with the Highest Quality Patents Issued in 2011
My team recently completed an analysis of Chicago’s most innovative companies in 2011 for Crain’s. It was non-trivial to tease out exactly which companies should be considered – those with Chicago headquarters, even if innovation was somewhere else, those with headquarters elsewhere but innovation in Chicago, small, big, etc. Once we had the list, we […]