Rowan Analytics Insights
Patent Prosecution Analytics Benchmarking Report – December 2021
Top Ten Law Firm Data
As we wrap up 2021, we turned our analysis of Office action data to the primary drafters of patents – law firms. We chose the top ten filers by volume at the USPTO as identified by Harrity and investigated their statistics.
As we have done with other data sets, we reviewed Office actions receiving a 112 rejection among these top 10 firms, and compared them to the USPTO national averages. The 112 rejection percentages for these top 10 were all slightly better than the average – ranging from 30 to 35%, compared to 37% across all Office actions. Are the law firms with the highest volumes more experienced and therefore less likely to make preventable 112 errors?
When looking at those Office actions containing only a 112 rejection, the top 10 again do better – ranging from 2.0% to 3.7% and averaging 2.9%, compared to 4.8% for all filers. While the numbers are small, the average of the top 10 filing firms is 45% better than the national average, a significant difference.
We also thought it might be interesting to compare this data to the findings that we wrote about in July 2021 where we looked at 112 rejection rates among the companies that receive the most Office actions. To compare to the most actively filing law firms, we pulled the 10 most actively filing companies, and averaged their 112 rejections, which came to 27%.
It is worth considering that the top filing companies in terms of volume predominantly file in Technology Centers like communications, computer software, computer networking and semiconductors / electrical, which as we presented in our August 2021 issue, generally enjoy lower 112 rejection rates than other Technology Centers like chemical and biotechnology / organic. It may be that the law firms studied this month have more variation among Technology Centers in their practice and this affects their 112 rejection rates.
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Sources: USPTO, Rowan analysis
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