Procrastination or incomplete data? An analysis of USPTO examiner search activity

Abstract

Highlights • Revisits the widespread USPTO examiner procrastination hypothesis. • Develops direct measure of examiner activity, i.e., search behavior. • Our findings show that examiners do not systematically procrastinate. • Direct proxies are needed in complex organizational environments. Abstract Frakes and Wasserman (2020) finds evidence that United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent examiners disproportionately receive credit for examination activities at the end of production periods and interprets this behavior as systemic examiner procrastination. Using newly assembled micro data on the timing of USPTO examiner activities, our results show examiner work effort more closely resembles a uniform distribution over the production period, indicating consistent workflow and not procrastination. The assembled data better track the precise timing of examiner work activities than the data used in Frakes and Wasserman (2020), explaining the differences in our results. While Frakes and Wasserman (2020) conduct a thorough analysis of the markers and consequences of “end-loading”, its use of an inadequate proxy for examination activity (i.e., Office action count dates) leads to incorrect conclusions about the examination process (i.e., widespread examiner procrastination).