Replies to post #131831 on Biotech Values

[iwfal]

What is the correlation between the duration of USPTO prosecution for a given pharma patent and the patent being ultimately upheld in a judgment or settlement? I’m looking more for a directional answer than a quantitative one. I would guess that the answer is a small positive number around 20%, but I’ve never thought about it until now.

I would guess that the time through the patent office is a function of many things, e.g.: importance to the company (because it is likely to be the critical patent in some way so they want to get it exactly right), arcane-ness, how many other things are being patented in the same general area, ...

My guess is that patents that take longer through the patent office are both challenged more and expected to be challenged more and between the two it is a wash on how they stand up in court. But, as you say, it is a total WAG - and I am not likely to do the digging necessary to find out. Too time intensive.