Prosecution Insights
Prosecution Insights
Technology area: Chemistry & Materials
2 pending office actions • 2 art units • 2 examiners • 0 of 2 (0%) have an AI response strategy ready • 4 patents granted in the last 365 days
Ald Vacuum Technologies GmbH has 2 pending office actions currently active in the Chemistry & Materials technology area. These actions are split between 2 distinct examiners and 2 distinct art units. This distribution shows that each pending matter is being handled by a different individual in a different technical group, requiring a specialized approach for each filing.
The busiest examiner for the portfolio is HEVEY, JOHN A, who is handling 1 pending office action. This workload is distributed such that no single individual manages all 2 pending office actions. This means that no single examiner has a majority influence over the company's current pending matters.
With 2 distinct art units involved, the company must navigate the specific examination guidelines of different technical divisions. The presence of 2 distinct examiners, including HEVEY, JOHN A, suggests that the prosecution outcomes will depend on the individual interpretations of these separate officials.
Based on the USPTO statutory response window for each pending office action. 1 of the docket's apps have a known mailing date; the rest are excluded from the tile counts.
Difficulty is derived from the rejection statutes on the most recent pending office action. §101-driven and multi-statute cases are graded Hard; §112-only and obviousness-type double-patenting cases are graded Easy; everything else is Medium. "Unknown" means we have not yet parsed a statute for that office action.
| Bucket | Cases |
|---|---|
| §103 only | 1 (50%) |
| §112 only | 1 (50%) |
How the docket's pending cases split across USPTO tech-center bands.
Manual office-action response work runs about 10 hours per case. The time-saved bands below show what IP Author's prosecution pipeline typically delivers — a conservative 20% on the low end, 35% in the middle, 50% on the high end.
| Examiner | Apps on this docket | Allow rate | Interview lift |
|---|---|---|---|
| HEVEY, JOHN A | 1 | 61.6% | +19.9% |
| SMOOT, MORIAH SIMONE MCMIL | 1 | 63.9% | +6.7% |
Cases in front of an examiner whose interview lift is 10 percentage points or more — i.e. interviewed cases historically resolve more favorably than non-interviewed ones. The top 1 ordered by deadline are shown.
| App # | Title | Examiner | Due in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18579958 | PROCESS FOR DECOMPOSING SIC OR SIC-CONTAINING MATERIALS | HEVEY, JOHN A | — |
| Art Unit | Apps |
|---|---|
| 1735 | 1 |
| 1733 | 1 |
| App # | Title | Examiner | Art Unit | Statutes | Status | Due in | AI | Filed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18579958 | PROCESS FOR DECOMPOSING SIC OR SIC-CONTAINING MATERIALS | HEVEY, JOHN A | 1735 | §103Other | Final Rejection | — | Pending | Jan 17, 2024 |
| 16961010 | Device for supporting and guiding a flow for metallic workpieces, and method for thermochemical treatment | SMOOT, MORIAH SIMONE MCMIL | 1733 | §112 | Non-Final OA | 13d | Pending | Jul 09, 2020 |
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