Patent procurement at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is affected by the type of examiner.
We gathered data from the LexisNexis PatentAdvisor database for each year from 2009 to 2019, for examiners in each of eight nondesign Tech Centers at the USPTO from the LexisNexis PatentAdvisor patent prosecution analytics database.
The data shows that the type of examiner can impact patent litigation, both in the U.S. district courts and in post-grant proceedings (e.g., inter partes review proceedings) at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, in terms of numbers and winning percentages.
This is the final article in a four-part series. The first part discussed the examiner types (so-called green, yellow and red examiners) and their effect on the number of patents issued each year. The second part explored the relationship between the examiner types and the effort required to obtain a patent, and the third part covered how examiner type affects after-final practice.