Unintended Negative Impacts of Promotional Language in Patent Evaluation

Promotional language has been increasingly used to aid the communication of innovative ideas in science. Yet, less is known about its role in the context of technological innovation. Here, we use a validated and domain-diagnosed lexicon of 135 promotional words to study the association between promotional language and patent evaluation outcomes among 2.7 million USPTO patent applications. Our large-scale study reveals three unexpected findings. First, in contrast to scientific evaluation, we find that a higher frequency of promotional words is negatively associated with the probability of an application being (i) granted a patent, (ii) transferred ownership, and (iii) successfully appealed. This promotional penalty holds even after accounting for a range of confounding factors and is largely robust across different technological areas. Among matched samples, the difference in the success rate between the lowest and highest promotional density quintile is 5.5, 5.9, and 5.3 percentage points for patentability, transferability, and rejection reversal. Second, contrary to institutional skepticism, we show that promotional language is not a mask of weak technology, but objectively reflects the degree of combinatorial novelty and future citation impact. Third, digging into the mechanisms, we find that the tolerance to promotional framing is strongly moderated by human factors, with men and experienced examiners showing a higher acceptance of promotional narratives than women and novice examiners. By revealing an emerging paradox in the patent system, our study offers theoretical and practical implications for improving patent evaluation through more objective scrutiny of linguistic patterns in patent filings.