{"paper":{"title":"Unintended Negative Impacts of Promotional Language in Patent Evaluation","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"Higher promotional language in patent applications links to lower grant, transfer, and appeal success rates.","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"cs.CL","authors_text":"Bingkun Zhao, Chenwei Zhang, Hao Peng","submitted_at":"2026-05-06T13:52:32Z","abstract_excerpt":"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 a"},"claims":{"count":4,"items":[{"kind":"strongest_claim","text":"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.","source":"verdict.strongest_claim","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C1","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"weakest_assumption","text":"That the 135-word promotional lexicon, validated in science, measures promotional framing without systematic bias or omission in the distinct legal and technical language of patents, and that all relevant confounders (beyond those controlled) are captured in the matching and regression setup.","source":"verdict.weakest_assumption","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C2","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"one_line_summary","text":"Patents with more promotional language show 5-6 percentage point lower success rates in granting, transfer, and appeal reversal, despite objectively reflecting higher combinatorial novelty and future citations.","source":"verdict.one_line_summary","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C3","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"headline","text":"Higher promotional language in patent applications links to lower grant, transfer, and appeal success rates.","source":"verdict.pith_extraction.headline","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C4","attestation":"unclaimed"}],"snapshot_sha256":"1a5cc92fc2dd018e5983dd955c12cd22e46241f8b3d18cde945b6a1bf9c3909e"},"source":{"id":"2605.04926","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":"aa92b72b-310a-4cf3-b9b5-146a69be0297","model_set":{"reader":"grok-4.3"},"created_at":"2026-05-08T16:28:24.536209Z","strongest_claim":"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.","one_line_summary":"Patents with more promotional language show 5-6 percentage point lower success rates in granting, transfer, and appeal reversal, despite objectively reflecting higher combinatorial novelty and future citations.","pipeline_version":"pith-pipeline@v0.9.0","weakest_assumption":"That the 135-word promotional lexicon, validated in science, measures promotional framing without systematic bias or omission in the distinct legal and technical language of patents, and that all relevant confounders (beyond those controlled) are captured in the matching and regression setup.","pith_extraction_headline":"Higher promotional language in patent applications links to lower grant, transfer, and appeal success rates."},"integrity":{"clean":false,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":1,"by_detector":{"doi_compliance":{"total":1,"advisory":0,"critical":1,"informational":0}},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2605.04926/integrity.json","findings":[{"note":"Identifier '10.5281/zenodo4898367(2021' is syntactically valid but the DOI registry (doi.org) returned 404, and Crossref / OpenAlex / internal corpus also have no record. The cited work could not be located through any authoritative source.","detector":"doi_compliance","severity":"critical","ref_index":74,"audited_at":"2026-05-19T14:01:48.266604Z","detected_doi":"10.5281/zenodo4898367(2021","finding_type":"unresolvable_identifier","verdict_class":"cross_source","detected_arxiv_id":null}],"available":true,"detectors_run":[{"name":"ai_meta_artifact","ran_at":"2026-05-20T10:40:37.919336Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"doi_title_agreement","ran_at":"2026-05-19T22:01:23.392059Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"doi_compliance","ran_at":"2026-05-19T14:01:48.266604Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":1}],"snapshot_sha256":"9612fe854b122b69f41766f0e4cdbd5e708bfd09bfe6469c86b409ebd2d68851"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}