#48: ETA: The Ultimate Alarm System

Better Patents Now - A podcast by LexisNexis® IP, Chris Holt, Megan McLoughlin

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Megan revisits the revolutionary metric for examiner behavior: ETA (Examiner Time Allocation). Although this new way of examining examiners has caught on quickly—and even inspired a few copycats—it has also sparked a lot of debate. In this episode, the host answers some of the more common questions and address objections to the metric. The upshot is that ETA was designed to be robust to some common obstacles in measuring examiner behavior, such as junior examiner status and the transition to primary. Nonetheless, it is best used as an alarm system. Knowing that your examiner is red is obviously important for developing strategy, but it’s not the end of the inquiry.