Patent Examination Outcomes and the National Treatment Principle

One of the principles enshrined in all international patent treaties is that equal treatment should be provided to inventors regardless of their nationality. However, little is known about whether this ‘national treatment’ principle is upheld in practice. In this paper, we analyze whether patent examination outcomes at the European and Japanese patent offices vary systematically by inventor nationality (which is proxied by inventor address) and technology area using a matched sample of 47,947 patent applications. Our main result is that in both patent offices, domestic inventors have a higher likelihood of obtaining a patent grant than foreign inventors, ceteris paribus. We also find evidence that the positive domestic inventor effect is stronger in areas of technological specialization in the domestic economy.