Patent Technological Diversity and Examination Outcomes in China

Abstract

This study examines how the duration of patent examination is affected by technological diversity of patent applications, using a sample of all pharmaceutical patent applications filed between 1985 and 2017 at State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO). Patent examination is a crucial process to evaluate the patentability of technological inventions. To understand what factors influence patent examination duration can offer strategic insights for both patent applicants and patent system designers. Although China has been leading the world’s patent applications since 2011, it is surprising that little research has been conducted on the process of patent examination in China. This thesis takes a step to fill this gap. This study complements prior research (Harhoff and Wagner, 2009; Tong et al., 2018) by zooming into the effect of technological diversity, which is one of the most important characteristics of patent applications. Competing risks hazard rate models show an inverted U-shaped relationship between patent applications’ technological diversity and the rates of decisions of both grant and rejection. It means that when a patent application combines technological elements with a moderate level of diversity, it will facilitate the assigned patent examiner to make the decision faster, whether it is grant or rejection. In addition, it is also found that the effect of technological diversity on the rate of grant, but not the rate of rejection, is significantly weakened for applications with more than 10 claims. A discussion of these findings and their implications is included at the end of the thesis.