Charles De Grazia

@article{de_grazia_3030,

title = {Procrastination or incomplete data? An analysis of USPTO examiner search activity},

author = {Charles de Grazia and Alexander Giczy and Nicholas Pairolero},

url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2024.105033},

year  = {2024},

date = {2024-09-01},

journal = {Research Policy},

volume = {53},

number = {7},

pages = {105033},

abstract = {Frakes and Wasserman (2020) finds evidence that United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent examiners disproportionately receive credit for examination activities at the end of production periods and interprets this behavior as systemic examiner procrastination. Using newly assembled micro data on the

timing of USPTO examiner activities, our results show examiner work effort more closely resembles a uniform distribution over the production period, indicating consistent workflow and not procrastination. The assembled

data better track the precise timing of examiner work activities than the data used in Frakes and Wasserman

(2020), explaining the differences in our results. While Frakes and Wasserman (2020) conduct a thorough analysis of the markers and consequences of ??end-loading'', its use of an inadequate proxy for examination activity (i.e., Office action count dates) leads to incorrect conclusions about the examination process (i.e., widespread examiner procrastination)},

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pubstate = {published},

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}

@article{de_grazia_1581,

title = {Examination incentives, learning, and patent office outcomes: The use of examiner's amendments at the USPTO},

author = {Charles de Grazia and Nicholas Pairolero and Mike Teodorescu},

url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733321001578},

year  = {2021},

date = {2021-12-01},

journal = {Research Policy},

volume = {50},

number = {10},

pages = {104360},

abstract = {We investigate how U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent examiner experience and seniority-basedincentives affect the innovation ecosystem. First, we show that examiners respond to production incentivesand demonstrate learning by increasing the use of examiner's amendments in both experience and seniority,a mechanism not previously studied. Second, this examination procedure directly benefits innovators andfirms by significantly reducing prosecution processing time without impacting patent quality. Finally, afterconsidering examiner's amendments, the negative relationship between examiner characteristics and patentexamination quality found in the previous literature does not persist at first action, a decision point thatallows for the clear measurement of examiner behavior. Our results demonstrate a need for reformulatedpolicy recommendations related to the structure of examination at the USPTO.},

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pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{de_grazia_1350,

title = {Innovation activities and business cycles: are trademarks a leading indicator?},

author = {Charles de Grazia and Amanda Myers and Andrew Toole},

url = {https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13662716.2019.1650252},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-01-01},

journal = {Industry And Innovation},

volume = {27},

number = {1/2},

pages = {184-203},

abstract = {Despite the widespread use of economic information to anticipate changes in business conditions, innovation metrics are not considered to be leading indicators. We argue that aggregate trademark data reflect firm-level choices that can help predict business cycles. In addition to establishing the conceptual basis for considering trademarks, our statistical evaluations, using turning point analysis and a novel machine learning method, find that trademark filings for product and service offerings in commercial use outperform many of the conventional leading indicators. Our work suggests that including trademark metrics in composite indexes could improve recession forecasting performance.},

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pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{de_grazia_1351,

title = {Embracing invention similarity for the measurement of vertically overlapping claims},

author = {Charles de Grazia and Jesse P. Frumkin and Nicholas Pairolero},

url = {https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10438599.2019.1593035},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-01-01},

journal = {Economics Of Innovation And New Technology},

volume = {29},

number = {2},

pages = {113-146},

abstract = {Clear and well-defined patent rights can incentivize innovation by granting monopoly rights to the inventor for a limited period of time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention. However, with cumulative innovation, when a product draws from intellectual property held across multiple firms (including fragmented intellectual property or patent thickets), contracting failures may lead to suboptimal economic outcomes. However, an alternative theory, developed by a variety of scholars, contends that patent thickets have a more ambiguous effect. Researchers have developed several measures to gauge the extent and impact of cumulative innovation and the various channels of patent thickets. This paper contends that mis-measurement may contribute to the incoherence and overall lack of consensus within the patent thickets literature. Specifically, the literature is missing a precise measure of vertically overlapping claims. We propose a new measure of vertically overlapping claims that incorporates invention similarity to more precisely identify inventive overlap. The measure defined in this paper will enable more accurate measurement, and allow for novel economic research on cumulative innovation, fragmentation in intellectual property, and patent thickets within and across all patent jurisdictions.},

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pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{marco_1349,

title = {Patent claims and patent scope},

author = {Alan Marco and Joshua Sarnoff and Charles de Grazia},

url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048733319301052},

year  = {2019},

date = {2019-11-01},

journal = {Research Policy},

volume = {48},

number = {9},

pages = {103790},

abstract = {x},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}