Prior art: To search or not to search

The quest for expansive intellectual property rights and the failure to disclose known relevant prior art

“…There are perverse incentives for inventors and their legal agents to remain ignorant of relevant art; the more they know, the greater their exposure under the duty of candor (Cotropia, ). Because of the potential benefits from securing low quality patents, strong incentives exist for inventors and lawyers not to do outside searches (Atal and Bar, ). In our own private conversations, several inventors indicated that counsel dissuaded them from searching for prior art.…”

Inventors and Impostors: An Analysis of Patent Examination With Self-Selection of Firms into R&D

“…The paper is closely related to a small but growing literature on patent examination. Langinier and Marcoul [2009] and Atal and Bar [2010] study inventors' incentives to search for and disclose relevant prior art to the patent office. Prior-art disclosure is not the focus of this paper.…”

Patent Quality and a Two‐Tiered Patent System

“…Atal and Bar [] found that innovators with high R&D costs have a stronger incentive to search for prior art before investing in R&D, so as to save the cost if their invention is not novel. High cost R&D projects are also likely to be the ones with high economic value (to cover the R&D cost).…”