Characteristics of U.S. Provisional Patent Applications and Their Relations with Patent Performance
Date Issued
2016
Date
2016
Author(s)
Chen, Chi-Tung
Abstract
One object of this study is to use the US Patent Application Database to identify the characteristics of provisional applications in the United States. Preference ratios, use ratios, and provisional application to nonprovisional application ratios were used to evaluate the filing behavior of applicants in filing provisional applications with respect to nonprovisional applications. Factors encouraging filing provisional applications include the possibility to obtain an earlier filing date, a longer patent term, and an earlier promoting opportunity. Factors discouraging filing provisional applications include the eventual higher cost in filing nonprovisional applications and the additional requirements for foreign applicants to file patent applications in the United States. These factors are discussed in this paper to explain the filing behavior of applicants in filing provisional applications with respect to nonprovisional applications. Applicants from the United States, Israel, and Canada were more likely to file provisional applications than applicants from other countries. We propose that the English ability of the applicants and additional requirements for foreign applicants might be the cause of this result. Applicants in the category of Drugs and Medical were more likely to file provisional applications than applicants in other categories. We propose that the possibility for obtaining an earlier filing date and a longer patent term might be the cause of this result. Another object of this study is to use the USPTO Patent Full-Text and Image Database （PatFT） to determine whether or not that patents with claiming priorities from provisional applications have better patent performance than patents without claiming priorities from provisional applications. Multiple indicators are used to analyze the issue. These indicators include: the examination time, the number of non-patent references, the number of claims, the number of forward citations, the number of backward citations, the number of patent families, the number of filing countries of the patent families, the unmaintained rate, and the current impact index. It is found that there are statistically significant differences for the two types of patents in the following variables: (1) Number of forward citations, (2) Number of backward citations, (3) Number of non-patent references, (4) Number of patent families, (5) Number of filing countries of the patent families, (6) Number of claims, and (7) Examination time. It is also found that patents with claiming priorities form provisional applications have higher maintained rate and better current impact index than patents without claiming priorities form provisional applications. Accordingly, it is concluded that patents with claiming priorities form provisional applications have better patent performance than patents without claiming priorities form provisional applications. Therefore, whether or not that patents with claiming priorities from provisional applications could be developed into an independent indicator to valuate a patent’s value.
Subjects
provisional patent application
nonprovisional patent application
patent indicator
patent performance
Type
thesis