It certainly shouldn't happen, but might happen at some places. It would be very suspicious if the same person's name appeared on, say, 100 patents filed with

It certainly shouldn't happen, but might happen at some places. It would be very suspicious if the same person's name appeared on, say, 100 patents filed within a few years of one another, and that person was a departmental manager. Inventors' dates of birth aren't on patent applications. To carry out the research, the authors of http://www2.itif.org/2016-demographics-of-innovation.pdf http://www2.itif.org/2016-demographics-of-innovation.pdf had to contact the inventors directly, so would have been able to filter out obvious cases of abuse.