| I've read hundreds of patents over the past 7 years or so, so the first citation is simply my experience. You won't find, for example, a broad patent on something like bytecode like this one https://www.google.com/patents/US4667290 these days However, I've been researching the patent system quite a bit, and have come across a number of studies about patent quality [1-12], including "software" patents [1, 2, 3, finding that software patents are no worse than other patents]. Unfortunately, there are many problems with these studies: 1) Judging patent quality is hard and time-consuming, and doing it for a significant number of patents to get data is much more so. Hence many studies use proxies to judge patent quality, such as back-citations [4, 5], or more complex multi-variate models [10] . And then other articles point out flaws in using proxies like this, or actually showing that the metrics actually show the opposite of what they conclude [6]. And then other studies that propose new metrics [7, 8, 9] 2) Related to 1, the other problem is looking at not enough data, looking at different subsets of data, or using different methodologies. Studies are usually careful to highlight these shortcomings and try to logically make an argument for generalizing these results, but it's hard to reach a general conclusion, especially since there is no real consensus. Now, back to your [Citation Needed]: Few studies convincingly evaluate USPTO (or other) patent quality over time. One study that does find an improvement over time [10] attributes it to the KSR decision rather than Google. Another says that EU patents are getting better over time, though not the US [11]. Another one does briefly argue that US patent quality has been increasing over time [12] based on a bunch of other studies, but some of these use metrics that are not fool-proof, as I mentioned in point 1). And no, patent lawyers and examiners do absolutely use Google for search. 1. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=970083 2. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=650921 3. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2291603 4. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=426020 5. http://www.oecd.org/newsroom/scienceandtechnologyfallingpate... 6. http://hallingblog.com/oecd-patent-quality-measurement-%E2%8... 7. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1452862 8. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1709999 9. http://www.columbia.edu/~mr2651/A_New_Look_at_Patent_Quality... 10. http://www.ipo.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/PatentQualityi... 11. http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/indprop/docs/patent/patq... 12. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2013... |