Patent Analytics for Predictions, Performance and Evaluations: Part 1

Aug 5, 2020

Evaluating Performance
Patent analytics have opened up opportunities to implement patent prosecution strategies that greatly improve your chances of obtaining a patent in less time and at a lesser cost. We continue to make great strides in optimizing those strategies with the development of proprietary patent metrics and tools that stand head and shoulders above patent data alone. Sophisticated patent prosecution metrics enable users to make accurate predictions about patent examiner behavior, improve the outcomes of filings with the USPTO and evaluate their performance along the way.

Patent Analytics for Predicting Examiner Behavior

The patent examiner who is assigned to evaluate your patent application is fundamental to your success with the USPTO. Patent examiners vary greatly in how likely they are to grant you a patent, but trying to predict whether a patent examiner will grant your patent requires more than a review of standard patent metrics. While patent examiner allowance rates and the number of office actions an examiner typically issues before allowance provide some value, they also have their pitfalls. For example, standard patent metrics are only a measure of patented or abandoned patent applications, which means they do not account for how an examiner is taking action on patent applications that are currently pending. They also penalize patent examiners for abandonments that may have been more the fault or decision of a patent applicant, rather than being tied to the actions of the examiner.

LexisNexis® IP has discovered that looking at the ratio of office actions issued by an examiner to the patents they have granted is more predictive of how an examiner will behave in the future than standard patent metrics. With this in mind, a new kind of patent metric has been developed, the PatentAdvisor ETA™, which compensates for the pitfalls of other metrics by taking into account all of a patent examiner’s office actions (including pending patent applications) and factoring in how long a patent examiner has been at the patent office. It is driven by a patent examiner’s past behavior—not the actions of patent applicants. Additionally, an examiner’s PatentAdvisor ETA value enables the examiner’s classification in the LexisNexis PatentAdvisor® patent prosecution platform as being either green (easy), yellow (moderate) or red (difficult), so users can quickly gauge the type of examiner they are dealing with.

eta scores
ETA benefits
Having access to a truly predictive patent metric gives PatentAdvisor™ users the power to develop sound strategies to deal with the examiners they have been assigned, enabling approaches to patent prosecution that are tailored to assigned examiners to enhance prosecution efficiency and effectiveness. Users can even consult with the Prosecution Guidebook within the PatentAdvisor platform for additional guidance and recommendations for how to take action on pending patent applications.

Keep in mind, however, that some patent examiners may be painstakingly difficult to overcome, and patent applicants have very limited options for switching patent examiners once prosecution has begun. It is important to do what you can to acquire an applicant-friendly patent examiner from the get-go, which leads us to other powerful uses of PatentAdvisor and the ETA patent metric. In Part 2 of “Patent Analytics for Predictions, Performance and Evaluations” we will reveal how ETA can be used to help obtain an applicant-friendly patent examiner even before you file your application, and how to use PatentAdvisor to evaluate USPTO patent prosecution performance.

To learn more about the exclusive PatentAdvisor ETA: