Prosecution Insights
Prosecution Insights
Technology area: Medical Devices & Mechanical Engineering
2 pending office actions • 2 art units • 2 examiners • 0 of 2 (0%) have an AI response strategy ready • 2 patents granted in the last 365 days
Checkpoint Surgical Inc. manages 2 pending office actions within the Medical Devices & Mechanical Engineering technology area. These actions are split between 2 distinct examiners and 2 distinct art units. This distribution means the company must navigate different examiner expectations and two different art unit environments. HOAG, MITCHELL BRAIN is the busiest examiner, currently holding 1 busiest examiner pending action. With 2 pending office actions in total, the portfolio's current workload is divided between the 2 distinct examiners.
The presence of 2 distinct art units suggests that the technical subject matter may span different sub-specialties within the broader Medical Devices & Mechanical Engineering field. Practitioners must tailor their responses to the specific nuances of each of the 2 distinct examiners. Managing 2 pending office actions across 2 distinct art units requires a diversified legal strategy. The applicant should monitor the progress of both actions to ensure that developments in one art unit do not negatively impact the other. The 1 busiest examiner pending action represents half of the current USPTO activity. This structure requires the applicant to maintain consistency across 2 distinct art units while addressing the individual concerns of HOAG, MITCHELL BRAIN and the other examiner.
Based on the USPTO statutory response window for each pending office action. 2 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%) |
| Multi-statute (no §101) | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| HOAG, MITCHELL BRAIN | 1 | 70.4% | +18.8% |
| BAIG, RUMAISA RASHID | 1 | 34.0% | +33.2% |
Multi-statute / §101-driven matters, or cases in front of an examiner with an allow rate under 30%. The top 1 ordered by deadline are shown.
| App # | Title | Examiner | Due in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18576614 | CIRCUMFERENTIAL NERVE CUTTER | HOAG, MITCHELL BRAIN | 114d overdue |
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 2 ordered by deadline are shown.
| App # | Title | Examiner | Due in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18576614 | CIRCUMFERENTIAL NERVE CUTTER | HOAG, MITCHELL BRAIN | 114d overdue |
| 17292186 | NERVE REGENERATION THERAPY SYSTEM AND METHOD | BAIG, RUMAISA RASHID | 15d |
| Art Unit | Apps |
|---|---|
| 3771 | 1 |
| 3796 | 1 |
| App # | Title | Examiner | Art Unit | Statutes | Status | Due in | AI | Filed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18576614 | CIRCUMFERENTIAL NERVE CUTTER | HOAG, MITCHELL BRAIN | 3771 | §103§112 | Non-Final OA | 114d overdue | Pending | Jan 04, 2024 |
| 17292186 | NERVE REGENERATION THERAPY SYSTEM AND METHOD | BAIG, RUMAISA RASHID | 3796 | §103 | Final Rejection | 15d | Pending | May 07, 2021 |
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