"In an ideal world, issued patents would not contain errors. In reality, patent drafting is tedious and time-consuming work and perfection is not an attainable goal. The patent industry seems to be steadily getting better, though. In a recent study, we uncovered an 11.24% decrease in errors per patent over the past four years. We observed this decrease by reviewing every patent issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) since 2020 - nearly 1.4 million patents."
"The steadiness of the decrease year after year across all three types of errors we track indicates a trend. This is not a one-time anomaly. And an 11.2% decrease in just four years is not a small dip. (It would have been interesting to extend our review as far back as 2010 or 2000. Unfortunately, the USPTO data format changes over time and existing tools cannot handle the older data formats)."
"For this study, we focused on three types of errors - numbering errors, antecedent basis errors, and word support errors. These types of errors were selected because (1) they are important errors to avoid and (2) the software can reliably find these errors. Note that the data only includes "red" errors in the software's proofreading results. The "yellow" warnings were not included because the warnings are more subjective."
Patent error rates decreased by roughly 11.24% per patent from 2020 through recent data, based on review of nearly 1.4 million USPTO-issued patents. The decline is steady year-over-year across the three tracked error types, indicating a likely trend rather than a one-time anomaly. The study focused on numbering errors, antecedent basis errors, and word support errors and included only software-flagged "red" errors while excluding more subjective "yellow" warnings. Numbering errors, largely dependency issues, declined about 10.3% since 2020. Changes in USPTO data formats prevented extending the automated review to older patents.
Read at IPWatchdog.com | Patents & Intellectual Property Law
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