Productivity in Patent Offices

Ernst & Young: Benchmarking Project – Productivity of the EPO, UKIPO & DPMA

Managing Intellectual Property: EPO productivity woes revealed

“Ernst & Young in cooperation with Management Team has been engaged by the European Patent Office (EPO) to conduct a benchmarking study on the productivity of the EPO and the national patent offices UKIPO (United Kingdom) and DPMA (Germany). This benchmarking study included the comparison of legal environments, the comparison of the patent granting processes and the analysis of productivity, measured by ‘time per action’-type of indicators, and productivity drivers, measured by specific key performance indicators. The analysis found that EPO’s productivity falls significantly behind the level of the national offices and identified a 50% difference in productivity between the EPO and the national offices. This difference is to some extent caused by the methodical features, since effort for written opinions and the involvement of the examining division cannot be properly accounted for. The total effect of these features and eight other explanatory factors may explain a productivity difference of 35% – 45% with two factors remaining that may be able to explain the residual.”

A detailed analysis of quantitative data on the patent granting process, the core of the project, is performed, including development of a methodology for measuring and comparing productivity, as well as findings of the root causes of the identified differences.

The statistics of certain productivity measures, such as time per product, time per communication, and of certain productivity drivers, such as experience of patent examiners, sickness days, adequacy of initial file allocation, communication per grant/refusal/withdrawal, oral proceedings per grant/refusal/withdrawal, are all of value.

The benchmarking results and recommendations are also applicable to SIPO to a great extent.