Ed. note: This is a sponsored post from our friends at Juristat, whose statistical modeling capabilities allow users to visually plot their chance of success in every aspect of the patent application process.
Is it better to be in front of a male or female patent examiner? Are women or men more likely to get their patent applications allowed?
Well, truth be told, we don’t know, but Juristat’s data does reveal some interesting statistical trends. We focused our analysis on two metrics — examiner allowance rate and average number of office actions to allowance — and identified behavioral trends. We do not claim that the results have any meaning beyond what our methodology and analysis shows.
USPTO Background
For those who may not prosecute patents regularly, we’ll give a little background on the organization of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). All patent examiners (those individuals responsible for either allowing or rejecting patent applications) are assigned to an art unit that’s identified by a four-digit number (e.g., 1643). The first two digits identify the technology center that an art unit belongs to (e.g., 1600s, 1700s, etc.). Each tech center is responsible for examining applications for a particular type of subject matter. It is in this way that the USPTO routes applications to examiners with the most relevant experience.
Methodology
In order to perform our analysis, we ascertained the gender of both the patent examiner assigned to each application and the gender of the first inventor listed on each application. To determine gender, we used the Social Security Administration’s data on baby names for the years 1940-2000. We then totaled the number of male and female designations for each first name. Using SSA probabilities, we assigned a gender to every name where the data showed a >= 90% confidence level. We disregarded gender-neutral names and names not yet registered in the U.S. As a result, 16.6% of examiners could not be classified. Applications in which either the examiner’s gender or the first inventor’s gender could not be determined were disregarded. All results are based on averages.
Overall Average Allowance Rates
On a very high level, examining the data from USPTO as a whole indicates that male examiners have a slightly higher average allowance rate (71.95%) than female examiners (66.80%).
As such, it comes as no surprise that both female and male inventors fare better in front of male patent examiners and female inventors fare the worst of any group when in front of female examiners.
Allowance Rates by Tech Center
However, just looking at the USPTO as a whole, even when broken down by the gender of the examiners and inventors, doesn’t provide the whole story. The USPTO divides patent applications into different technology centers (e.g., tech center 1600, 1700, etc.) by the subject matter of the invention. Examining the data by individual tech centers provides a more detailed view of the statistical trends detected in the overall data.
We examined eight tech centers (excluding those solely for design patents) and determined that in six out of eight tech centers, the highest allowance rate occurs when male examiners review applications from male inventors and the lowest occurs when female examiners review applications from female inventors. Of those six, tech centers 3600 and 3700 (notably two tech centers plagued with Alice rejections), are particularly difficult for female inventors.
In two tech centers, however, the highest average allowance rate was seen where female examiners reviewed applications by female inventors. These tech centers (2400 and 2600) also happen to have the lowest percentage of female inventors, at 13.10% and 13.43%, respectively.
Overall Examiner Timing
Zooming back out to look at the USPTO as a whole, the average number of office actions and average time to allowance for male and female examiners is very similar.[1] Disparities emerge when the data is broken down by the gender of the inventor. In that instance, applications with a female as the first named inventor tend to take slightly longer and require more office actions before being allowed, regardless of the gender of the examiner.
Similarly, on average, applications by male inventors with male examiners receive only 1.91 office actions before an allowance, while applications by female inventors (regardless of the gender of the examiner) receive 2.07.
Examiner Timing by Tech Center
In general, the slowest tech center with the most office actions per allowance is the 2400s (one of the tech centers in which female examiner/female inventor pairings have the highest allowance rate).
| Tech Center | Examiner Gender/Inventor Gender | Average Days to Allowance | Average Office Actions to Allowance |
| 1600 | F/F | 1036.41 | 2.14 |
| 1600 | F/M | 1082.72 | 2.26 |
| 1600 | M/F | 1041.01 | 2.18 |
| 1600 | M/M | 1064.43 | 2.22 |
| 1700 | F/F | 1188.76 | 2.39 |
| 1700 | F/M | 1138.37 | 2.19 |
| 1700 | M/F | 1175.19 | 2.37 |
| 1700 | M/M | 1119.92 | 2.13 |
| 2100 | F/F | 1237.43 | 2.14 |
| 2100 | F/M | 1233.90 | 2.03 |
| 2100 | M/F | 1245.47 | 2.19 |
| 2100 | M/M | 1216.20 | 2.05 |
| 2400 | F/F | 1347.72 | 2.34 |
| 2400 | F/M | 1351.99 | 2.31 |
| 2400 | M/F | 1357.59 | 2.38 |
| 2400 | M/M | 1355.54 | 2.39 |
| 2600 | F/F | 1165.19 | 1.88 |
| 2600 | F/M | 1173.92 | 1.89 |
| 2600 | M/F | 1173.48 | 1.92 |
| 2600 | M/M | 1161.81 | 1.88 |
| 2800 | F/F | 853.57 | 1.63 |
| 2800 | F/M | 842.91 | 1.57 |
| 2800 | M/F | 872.47 | 1.63 |
| 2800 | M/M | 858.59 | 1.57 |
| 3600 | F/F | 1010.36 | 1.94 |
| 3600 | F/M | 997.46 | 1.92 |
| 3600 | M/F | 1005.33 | 2.01 |
| 3600 | M/M | 994.10 | 1.91 |
| 3700 | F/F | 1168.45 | 2.34 |
| 3700 | F/M | 1107.17 | 1.95 |
| 3700 | M/F | 1212.47 | 2.40 |
| 3700 | M/M | 1111.39 | 1.99 |
The 3700s in particular have a large disparity between the average number of office actions given to female inventors versus male inventors. Overall, however, the speediest tech center tends to be the 2800s while the slowest is the 2400s, without much variation between the speeds or average office actions for male and female examiners or inventors.
A Note on Statistical Analysis
Statistical trends appearing in data, while interesting, may not tell the whole story. In this particular case, there is a large disparity between the number of applications filed by male and female applicants and the number of male and female examiners working at the USPTO. As shown below, the sheer numbers of applications examined in our analysis vary widely depending on the examiner/inventor pairing at issue.
Similarly, in the two tech centers in which female examiner/female inventor pairings have the highest average allowance rate, the proportions of applications are even more skewed. Female applicants make up only 13% of all applications in those tech centers. The especially large gap between the numbers of female and male applicants in these tech centers led us to consider the possibility that these two tech centers are exemplifying something similar to Simpson’s Paradox, in which a trend that appears in divided datasets disappears when the data is analyzed as a whole.[2]
The Sales-y Bit
All of the data presented above is based on averages. Any individual examiner may differ greatly from his or her tech center’s average allowance rate, time to allowance, and number of office actions to allowance. Juristat’s Examiner Reports provide a much more detailed look into the behavior of each individual examiner and can be accessed on our three-day free trial.
Conclusion
So, in conclusion, might you be better off with a female or male examiner? The answer appears to be everyone’s favorite law school essay response: it depends.
Juristat’s statistical modeling capabilities allow its users to visually plot their chance of success in every aspect of the patent application process. Ultimately, Juristat offers nearly limitless competitive advantages to its users and their clients.
[1] Male Examiners Average Time to Allowance: 1,067.15 days
Average Office Actions to Allowance: 1.99
Female Examiners Average Time to Allowance: 1,066.33 days
Average Office Actions to Allowance: 2.00
[2] This phenomenon may have appeared to some extent in our data with respect to Tech Center 2600. When the data is broken up by gender of both the applicant and the examiner, female examiner/female inventor pairings had an average allowance rate of 77.5%. However, when the data for Tech Center 2600 is broken down only by the gender of the inventor, male inventors fare very slightly better overall with an average allowance rate of 76.83% versus female inventors’ average allowance rate of 76.75%.