Departure and promotion of U.S. patent examiners: Do patent characteristics matter?

Abstract

Using data from patent examiners at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, we ask whether, and if so how, examiners' career outcomes relate to aspects of the patent review process. Exploiting longitudinal information about all the patents granted by a group of examiners between 1976 and 2006 and their yearly mobility outcomes (departure and promotion) between 1992 and 2006, we find consistent evidence from static, dynamic and duration models of the importance of patent characteristics, granting experience in specific technological fields, repeated interactions with the same inventor and self-citations in predicting an examiner's departure or promotion.