Backlogged patent office’s allow poor patents that increases litigations

Patent backlogs may also impose costs through lowering the quality of the patents granted as examiners strive to process applications more quickly in the face of rising workloads. As patent offices seek to hire more staff rapidly in response to rising numbers of applications, the proportion of senior staff decreases, and those staff spend more time training the new hires (Pinkos, 2005). In recent years plenty of anecdotal evidence has cited falls in patent quality, although to date there has been little empirical evidence of this effect (Hedlund, 2007). A reduction of patent quality, if this does result from patent backlogs can be costly for three main reasons (Hedlund, 2007). First, if examiners are incorrectly granting applications, it may encourage firms to pursue patents for potentially infringing inventions because they know that there is a possibility of grants. The backlog problem is then exacerbated, as more applications are attracted. Second, a low quality patent system creates an environment where infringement and litigation are more likely, as the validity of patents is questionable. Again, this may create an incentive to file more low quality patent applications to take advantage of this.